Really record breaking
I have no interest in athletics, so I'd never heard of Kenyan distance runner Agnes Tirop, until her murder was reported today. She was only 25.
But what did pique my interest was that she set the world record for the women's 10km road race, in Germany, last month. Well, not so much that she set it, but how she set it.
As athletes' performance improves towards some theoretical upper limit, we're used to seeing only incremental improvements in records. But Tirop completed the race in 30:01 minutes, a full 28 seconds faster than the previous record of 30:29. That's a massive improvement of 1.5%. And a record that's unlikely to be bettered for some time to come.
RIP Agnes Tirop.