A new world record has been set at the Paralympic Games in Rio 2016 in the men’s 1500m final, class T13, but what a final that was!
Abdellatif Baka from Algeria finished the first with the time of 3 minutes and 48.29 seconds while beating the previous Paralympic world record time of 3:48.31.
Ethiopian runner Tamiru Demisse came second, and the third was Henry Kirwa from Kenya. The winner’s brother, Fouad Baka, also Algerian, finished at 4th place.
The class T13 is for the visually impaired runners. The fact that everyone is talking about and what makes this race interesting is that the top-four Paralympians were faster than the actual Olympics champion Matthew Centrowitz Jr. The athlete from the USA finished his final race in 3:50 at the very same track in August. The 4th Paralympian Fouad Baka completed the race in 3:45.59.
“This gold medal is the result of the non-stop hard work in the previous two years”, said Baka, the winner. “It was not easy, in fact, it was very, very hard for me” Baka concluded.
