Yomi Omogbeja (12/03/2006)

Ethiopia's African 5000m record holder Meseret Defar has successfully defended her 3000m title at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Moscow.

Defar defied very strong challenge from Russia's newly crowned World Indoor 3000m record holder*Liliya Shobukhova to win in 8:38.80, thus becoming only the second woman to win a second title in the event.

The Russian settled for the silver medal finishing in 8:42.18 while Poland's Lidia Chojecka, the European Indoor 3000m champion, took the bronze in a season's best 8:42.59.

Defar's fellow Ethiopian Sentayehu Ejigu was fourth with a personal best of 8:43.38, with Russian Olesya Syreva who had clocked 8:29.00, the second fastest ever time in the world just this year, surprisingly fifth in 8:44.10.

An obviously relieved Defar said after the race: "I trained hard for that. My performance was good, I like running indoors very much."

Defar, The Athens Olympics 5000m gold medallist came very close to breaking the women's 3000m World Indoor record, which she narrowly missed last year, running 8:30.94 to post the third-fastest time in history at the 2006 Reebok Boston Indoor Games in January.

Her time was bested only by Berhane Adere's four-year-old world record of 8:29.15 and Defar's own 8:30.05, also run at the same meet in 2005.

Kenyans Daniel Kipchirchir Komen (3:42.55) and Elkanah Angwenyi (3:42.98) were relegated to the Silver and Bronze positions in the men's 1500m final by a late surge from Ukrainian Ivan Heshko, who won in 3:42.08.

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