Mo Farah marked his return to the track by breaking the one-hour world record at Friday’s Memorial Van Damme Diamond League meeting in Brussels.
Farah was not alone in breaking new ground in the rarely-run event as world 1500m and 10,000m champion Sifan Hassan smashed the women’s mark.
In an empty stadium because of the coronavirus crisis, Hassan first improved the previous women's mark of 18,517m set by Ethiopia's Dire Tune at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting in 2008 by covering 18,930m.
In the final race of the meeting, Farah broke Haile Gebrselassie's 13-year-old record of 21,285m on his return to the track. Farah, who ran with his training partner Bashir Abdi, established a new world mark of 21,330m.
Abdi took the lead with five minutes left and challenged Farah until the closing stages but ended up eight meters behind.
Farah switched to road racing in 2017 but is planning to defend his 10,000 meters title at the Tokyo Olympics next year.
"I'm very happy to break the world record today. What an amazing way to do it and to show people what is possible," said the 37-year-old Farah.
Hassan and Kenya's world marathon record-holder Brigid Kosgei fought toe to toe at the King Baudouin stadium. Hassan accelerated in the final minute to leave the marathon world-record holder powerless in her slipstream. Kosgei was later disqualified for stepping off the track.
"An hour is long. It takes a lot of concentration and focus. After the first half I found my rhythm. I'm really happy with this record," Hassan said.
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Reigning Olympic 1,500m champion Faith Kipyegon of Kenya failed in her bid to break the 1,000 meters record, crossing in 2 minutes 29.92 seconds, shy of Svetlana Masterkova's 2:28.98 record set in the same stadium back in 1996.
Kipyegon set the second best time over the distance last month in Monaco with a 2:29:15 finish. Following the sustained tempo of a pacemaker, she looked on track to set a new best mark until the last 150 meters but faded in the finale.
In the pole vault, Armand Duplantis of Sweden failed to improve Sergey Bubka's best outdoor mark of 6.14 meters. The world record holder cleared 6.00m but failed in three attempts at 6.15.
Additional reporting by AP.