Ciara Mageean breaks Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish 1,500m record as she pips Laura Muir to Diamond League title in Brussels

A terrific win by Ciara Mageean at the Brussels Diamond League meeting on Friday night saw her smash the long-standing Irish 1,500 metres record which had stood to Sonia O’Sullivan since 1995.

Mageean took the win and the record in brilliant style, hitting the front down the home stretch in a world-class field and nailing the victory in 3:56.63 – breaking the four-minute barrier for the first time and improving her previous best of 4:00.15 set in 2019.

More importantly from Mageean, it took over two seconds off that previous Irish 1,500m record belonging to O’Sullivan, the 3:58.85 she ran in Monte Carlo way back in 1995.

Mageean also took the scalp of Britain’s Laura Muir, second here in 3:56.86, who won gold in the European Championships ahead of Mageean earlier this month, and also at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in July.

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It caps a brilliant season for the 30-year-old Mageean, who missed several weeks of racing at the start of the summer due to injury and also Covid, the Portaferry women now moving into properly world-class territory with her 3:56.63, a rare victory for an Irish athlete at a Diamond League meeting to boot.