Yeshnil Karan breaks 54-year-old national 10,000m record

Fiji’s long distance running sensation, Yeshnil Karan has smashed a 54-year-old 10,000-metre national record during the UniSport Australia Nationals Athletics Championships at the Gold Coast Performance Centre.

The former Tavua College student was competing as a guest athlete and crossed the finishing line first in a stunning 30 minutes 19.92 seconds.

His performance shattered the long-standing national record of 31 minutes 32.00 seconds, set in 1971 by the legendary Usaia Sotutu in Provo, USA, improving the mark by a remarkable 72 seconds.

This was only Karan’s second-ever track race, and he bettered his personal best of 32 minutes 32.30 seconds—set during his gold medal run at the 2023 Pacific Games in Honiara—by an extraordinary 2 minutes and 12 seconds.

Present to witness this historic run was 1976 Olympian and Fiji Sports Hall of Fame inductee Tony Moore Junior, a former teammate of Sotutu in the early 1970s.

While reflecting on Karan’s performance, Junior says this delightful young man is brimming with talent and potential.

This landmark achievement not only reaffirms Karan’s rising status as one of Fiji’s finest distance athletes but also marks a defining moment in the nation’s athletics history—a generational record, broken with brilliance.