NAIROBI, Kenya, September 5- Team Kenya Paralympians continued teaching their Olympics counterpart how to win in world record style after Abraham Tarbei successfully defended his 1500m title on Tuesday night.
It was the country’s second gold medal of London 2012 and with more expected, the Paralympians performance is set to eclipse the much maligned display of the class that won a similar number of top medals from the Olympics event last month.
Tarbei was simply dominant in his T46 category metric mile final, stopping the clock at 3:50.15 that blew away his previous 3:52.50 standard bearer to become the second Kenyan after Samwel Muchai to scoop gold with a world record in London.
His performance pushed Ethiopian Fkire Indelbu who won silver in 3:59.87 and Algerian Samir Nouioua who took bronze in 3:51.80 to career best performances but by the time they checked in for the finish, the winner was well and truly out of sight.
Tarbei’s compatriots, Jonah Chesum and Stanley Cheruiyot finished further behind in 7th and 11th positions respectively.
Earlier, David Korir missed out on gold in the 1500m T13 class to Tunisian Abderrahim Zhiou despite leading for the better part of the race.
Zhiou managed to beat Korir with a devastating homestretch finish over the last 50m to cross the line in a world record of 3:48.31 with the Kenyan timing of 3:48.84 for silver been while home runner David Devine of Great Britain clocked a Regional Record of 3:49.79 to take the bronze.
Triple Beijing champion, Henry Kirwa who won bronze in the 5000m T12 on Tuesday failed to defend his second crown finishing fifth in a personal best of 3:53.55.
Meanwhile, Olympics bronze winner, Abel Mutai was topped by Jairus Birech during the 3000m steeplechase race at the Zagreb IAAF World Challenge Meeting in Croatia.
Birech forced the London medallist to accept runners-up in 8:11.80 against 8:12.47 as Elijah Chelimo crossed the finis in 8:12.88 to complete the podium sweep.
In the men’s metric mile, London winner Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria clocked 3:32.58 for the win as Kenyan James Magut (3:33.31) and Daniel Komen (3:33.39) trailed him across the line for the minor places in the rostrum.
Winnie Chebet placed third in the women 800m race in 1:59.85 as American pair Maggie Vessey (1:59.61) and Brenda Martinez (1:59.63) romped home to take the first two positions.