00:00It seemed like she'd completely destroyed the world record, but as people took a closer look
00:04at the race, there were quite a few questions raised. When Toby Amuson from Nigeria beat the
00:09100m hurdles world record held by American runner Kendra Harrison, people couldn't believe it was
00:15real. After all, Kendra's record in 2016 was only a hundredth of a second faster than the former
00:21world record, which had stood for 28 years. So in 2022, when Toby set a time of 12.12,
00:28nearly a tenth of a second faster than Kendra's record, it didn't even seem possible. However,
00:33soon after, people online began investigating, and they began dissecting every little part of what
00:39might have contributed to the record. And pretty quickly, Toby's unusual choice of shoes became the
00:45focus of contention. The shoes Toby was wearing for this race, the Adidas Adizero Advantes,
00:50weren't the usual shoes worn by elite hurdlers. In fact, the shoes were designed for distance races.
00:56They feature a thick padded sole, which is designed to minimize the impact on the foot,
01:00which Toby said she needed after developing tendinitis in her knee. However, despite it
01:06being seen as an odd choice for the event, the shoes were perfectly race legal. And even if they
01:10did help her in some way, it still didn't explain what was perhaps the strangest part of Toby's record
01:16run. When looking at the leaderboard, five out of the eight total runners ran lifetime personal
01:21bests. Some commentators questioned the accuracy of the race clock. However, the timing facilities
01:27were checked for accuracy, and no errors were found. But just when it seemed like people had
01:32finally started to accept that Toby had indeed run the fastest time in history in the semi-final,
01:38Toby lined up at the starting line again for the finals, and she ran a 12.06.
01:44I cannot believe it. Two world records in one night. There had to be something else happening
01:51here, right? Well, there is one more controversy that held a little more weight than the other
01:56concerns, and that was the discussion around wind speed. Wind speed in athletics, particularly short
02:02straight track races, can either assist or hinder an athlete's performance. And in the case of a
02:08tailwind, if the measurement is over two metres per second, the race is considered ineligible for
02:14world records. So, when the wind speed measurements came in for Toby's insane new record, it came as
02:20a massive shock to the crowd and the commentators who thought they'd just witnessed the world record
02:24being broken twice in one day. The wind reading has transpired to mean it is not world record legal.
02:32Toby's win still counted, of course. She was officially the first Nigerian world champion,
02:37though her time wasn't eligible for a world record. But hang on, what about the wind speed on the first
02:42race? After the measurements were checked, the official reading came in. 0.9 metres per second.
02:49Toby Amuelson had officially broken the world record. She's looking at the clock to see if it was a
02:54mistake. But it wasn't. It's been confirmed. That is a massive world record.
