I looked at where Thief's run ended and seems it's when the black screen just after Legion dies, before the final cinematic. This means this could be the first ever sub 29!

This run has a couple of tricks not seen in previous runs, including an entirely different piston skip. This is only possible thanks to the difference in jumping on the PAL version! (adding a region variable to submissions would be lovely) Specifically, I think this might be an Australian disc? I need to figure out how to dump my copy.

Another thing this run revealed to me is that there are noticeable differences between emulator and real hardware. Controls on keyboard vs. gamepad notwithstanding, emulator tends to run the game a little bit faster. This normally doesn't matter given the low FPS in general but is crucial for a PAL speedrun - the mega jumps only work if in-game FPS is above 15. The same speed discrepancy is undoubtedly present on NTSC EMU vs. hardware. Thankfully, for the Any% route, I've been able to achieve all tricks on real hardware although I had to include camera manipulation in order to achieve the necessary FPS.