NOTHING, not the heat and humidity of a Beijing night, nor the team industry of a trio of fleet-footed Kenyans, nor a stumble on the last lap as he tried to overtake a back-marker, could knock an imperious Mo Farah off his stride in the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium last night.
In a way, the ultimate words of praise came from Geoffrey Kamworor, one of Farah’s beaten rivals. “He is the best, just too tough,” said the young Kenyan.
That compliment will mean as much to Farah as any of the names he is now placed alongside in the record books. Names such as Haile Gebrselassie, whose tally of four gold medals at world championships Farah has now surpassed, and Kenenisa Bekele, whose five gold medals will be equalled by the remarkable champion should he win over 5,000m on Saturday to complete a back-to-back double.
In turning the 10,000m into a medley of his greatest hits, from silver in Daegu in 2011 to gold at London 2012 and in Moscow two years ago, in teasing and then trouncing his pursuers over the final lap, Farah laid claim to his own era of endurance running just as Gebrselassie and Bekele, two of Farah’s idols, had done before him.
He has now won six global gold medals. And he has done so after a summer of almost intolerable pressure from the allegations surrounding his coach, Alberto Salazar, who allegedly used performance-enhancing drugs to help some of his athletes. Farah was implicated not by any shred of evidence but by association alone. At the end of it, Farah willingly released his blood data from seven years up to the London Olympics in an attempt to stop, as he put it, his name “being dragged through the mud.”
Advertisement
His run of success through recent years is unprecedented. After being beaten in the 10,000m in Daegu in 2011 he won the 5,000m a week later, then double gold in the London Olympics and the Moscow 2013 world championships, before defending his world 10,000m title last night. No one has won six consecutive titles before, and Farah can make it seven on Saturday.
“It means a lot because I genuinely never thought I’d be able to come here year after year and keep doing it,” said Farah. “You don’t plan that. You can plan how to do world championships and Olympics and everything else, but through all that you have to stay injury free, stay focused and get your races right, and sometimes it’s not easy.
“I’m 32 now and it’s nice to still be winning races at that age and, hopefully, I still have a couple of years left in terms of the track and then we’ll see what we can do on the roads.” That means a return to the marathon, which has been one of Farah’s more conspicuous failures so far.
Farah had expected a tough test from the Kenyans and the Ethiopians. There was a suggestion that, at long last, the Kenyans would work as a team to break the rhythm and control of the champion. Worrying signs of distress came early for Farah as he took some water from the side of the track, poured it over himself and dropped to the back of the field.
By halfway, he was back in contention and sitting on the heels of the leaders with his usual long-striding rhythm. Within a lap or two, it was the Kenyans — Kamworor, Paul Tanui and Bedan Muchiri — who began to show signs of distress. Farah was looking to his Oregon Project teammate, Galen Rupp, for help, but the American, too, was struggling with the pace.
Advertisement
“We knew they were going to go faster so we wanted to try and sit back, but then we didn’t want to give them too much space so that a massive gap built up,” Farah explained. “If it wasn’t so windy we definitely would have worked together and gone further back and worked our way through more.”
The field had narrowed down to six by the closing stages, with Farah barely pushed out of his easy stride behind the Kenyans and Rupp, hanging on for dear life.
Just before the bell, Farah accelerated into the lead, stretching his pursuers steadily. He had learnt from his last major defeat, way back in the 10,000m in Daegu four years ago, not to make the break all at once, but to open up the gap slowly and steadily.
His only danger then was a stumble as he tried to manoeuvre round a back-marker and was clipped accidentally by Kamworor. For a moment, it seemed Farah might fall, or at the very least lose his rhythm, but he simply picked up the pace again and had enough left to power away from the gallant Kamworor in the home straight. It was a masterclass in the art of breaking hearts and winning gold medals, of being patient and balancing a long-term plan with the realities of the conditions and the tactics of his rivals. Victory also erased an unwanted memory in the Bird’s Nest where, in the 2008 Olympics, Farah had failed to make the final of the 10,000m. Getting water on board early, he explained, was easier when the pace was slacker.
“I was getting pretty hot so I got some water, poured it over my head and from then on I just stayed relaxed, stayed calm,” Farah said. “But that last lap was close. It wasn’t easy. For the last four or five years I’ve been competing, I haven’t had to run that fast.” His time of 27:01.13 was respectively 20 seconds and nearly 30 seconds quicker than his winning times in Moscow and London.
Advertisement
“I honestly thought I was gone,” Farah said of his stumble on the last lap. “I was thinking, ‘No, not 24 laps into it, not on the last lap.’ I was trying to go round [the back-marker] and the Kenyan caught my leg.
“However, I managed to stay on my feet, go round to the front and make sure I had something left for the end.”
Watching from the side, coach Salazar would have been proud of his protégé, the kid from London who would not take no for an answer. Farah’s association with the Cuban-American will probably end this season as Farah enters a new stage of his career under the guidance of Barry Fudge, head coach of the UK Athletics endurance programme. But Farah proved decisively last night that he is the master of his generation.