Moscow: Just when they thought they had finally caught him, Mo Farah slipped away into the Moscow evening to complete his collection of long-distance track golds.
If there was a Grand Slam in athletics, Farah would now have won it: Olympic champion at 5,000m and 10,000m and, on Saturday in a nervy, pulsating final lap in the Luzhniki stadium, he added the 10,000m to the 5,000m world title won two years ago in Daegu. Only the great Kenenisa Bekele has held all four long-distance track golds at the same time and few would bet against the 30-year-old Farah skipping away with the 5,000m title again later this week.
The only question now is: What next? Farah wanted to run the 1500m here in Moscow and Coe, for one, fancied his chances of taking a medal at the very least. Salazar has suggested that his man could tackle the 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon in Rio. On Saturday’s evidence, he could sweep the board.
Brendan Foster, who won a bronze medal in the 10,000m Montreal Olympics, enthused about Farah’s race from the BBC commentary box. “That was a brutal last lap,” he said. “He was stretching for it for 54 seconds. He knows he can win it and that’s the difference. He’s a winner. There might not be many in the stadium for you, Mo, but they are jumping up and down at home.
“He’s the greatest distance runner this country has ever had. It’s a pleasure to be around him. He’s on the edge of some of the sport’s greats and he can go on to be one of the greatest of all time.”
London this was not, though the race took on a similar air of catch-me-if-you-can. The Muscovites tried to raise the decibels in the closing stages but a quarter-full stadium is no way for a champion of Farah’s calibre to be honoured. Not that it mattered much. Even without 80,000 home voices roaring him home, Farah was able to pace his race to perfection and pull out a little bit extra as his Daegu 10,000m conqueror, Ebrahim Jeilan, and the gallant Paul Tanui threatened to upset the pre-competition favourite.
It was Jeilan who suffered this time. In Daegu, the relatively unknown Ethiopian had taught Farah a lesson in psychology, one that has been at the heart of Farah’s dominance ever since. Outrun over the final 200m that night, Farah learnt how to break his pursuers by just letting them glimpse victory before edging away again. Farah keeps more aces up his sleeve than a card sharp and had to produce a few in the final moments here on Saturday night as a sleepy opening half of the 10,000m turned into a time of 27:21.71, nine seconds quicker than his victory last summer.
“It was just like two years ago, when almost exactly the same thing happened,” said Farah. “I knew that Jeilan was there and I kept thinking: ‘Not again, not again, not again’. But I’d been thinking all the way that I had to leave something to the end and I had to make the last lap worth it.
“It’s a medal that’s been missing — Jeilan deserved to win in Daegu and I can’t take that away from him — but I wanted to get that feeling [of winning] again. It was important that I stayed out of trouble.
“I did get tripped a couple of times because I’ve got such a long stride, but I did feel the pace was a little slow. I am surprised that they didn’t push up the pace. But when I went to the front I wanted to slow it down and that didn’t work.”
On paper, Farah seemed to have the answers to any of the questions posed by the Kenyans and Ethiopians. Just hours earlier, Sebastian Coe, a victor in this stadium 33 years ago, had pondered the tactical options for Farah’s rivals and just shaken his head. It wasn’t, said Coe, that Farah didn’t think he could lose but that his rivals didn’t think he could lose either. If he sustained a fast pace, Farah could accelerate away from them and if they slowed it down that played into the Briton’s hands as well.
The only danger was the onset of fatigue after a blitzkrieg of a season and a touch of complacency born of running 3:28 to break Steve Cram’s long-standing British 1500m record and following up at the Anniversary Games with a blistering 3,000m. Only Edwin Sol has beaten Farah over one of his Olympic distances this year and the Kenyan wasn’t in the field on Saturday night.
Taking a leaf from the Kenyan manual, Farah kept the field guessing for the first half of the race. Buried at the back of the 35-strong field for the opening six laps, he effortlessly made his way through to the front group in less than half a lap as if to remind the front-runners that their quest was pointless.
As in London, he then dropped back to the midfield as the race reached its halfway point led by the six Kenyans and Ethiopians in a neat conga. Galen Rupp, Farah’s training partner and one ally, moved into the front three and Farah then followed him through with eight laps to go.
The American, tall and upright, is a good sighter for Farah because though he is improving with every race, Farah still has his measure.
With four and a half laps left, Farah hit the front for the first time, with Tanui of Kenya and the young Ethiopian Abera Kuma on his heels. Bumped briefly by Rupp and momentarily boxed in on the kerb, Farah simply pulled wide to find daylight and began to wind up his finishing kick a lap and a quarter from home.
For a moment, as Tanui and Jeilan almost tripped over each other to reach Farah’s shoulder, it seemed that, for once, the double Olympic champion might have mistimed his run for home. His legs looked a little heavy and the air was close and humid. Perhaps the post-Olympic celebrations had finally caught up with him.
No one should have doubted Farah or his coach, Alberto Salazar, who just last week had described one of Mo’s training sessions in the wake of an unexpected early season defeat by Sol. “It was a privilege to watch it,” said the American. “Mo had to crawl off the track.”
The origin of Saturday night’s epic win could be found in those hard days back in Portland under the stern gaze of Salazar, who once ran himself so far past the point of no return in a road race that the priest was called to his bedside. Time and again, Tanui and Jeilan came to within touching distance of Farah in the home straight, only to find themselves chasing shadows once more.
A last lap of 54 seconds was enough to kill off the competition. Paula Radcliffe, world record holder for the marathon, said: “Farah will have been having a few anxious moments in that last 150m but I think if he had really, really been pushed Mo would have found another gear.”
Farah’s place in the pantheon of great athletes was assured in London and needs no further elevation here. But no athlete has stopped the pulse or lifted the spirits so repeatedly as the double world and Olympic champion.
With inputs from AP
