Farah, unbeaten in major races since the 2011 World Championships, is the first British track athlete to claim three Olympic gold medals and will seek a fourth in next week’s 5000m.
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Should Farah also defend his 5,000m title, he would become the first athlete since Finland’s Lasse Viren in 1976 to retain two Olympic distance titles.
Team GB Rio 2016 medal tally: Gold 9.
Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola (27:06.26) nicked the bronze medal from his countryman Yigrem Demelash (27:06.27) by one hundredth of a second as London 2012 silver victor and Farah’s training partner, American Galen Rupp (27:08.92) dropped to fifth in an absorbing contest.
Other injection of pace, led by Tamirat Tola, Muchiri and Kamworor stretched the field even further, with lap times beginning to hit 64 seconds.
“I’d promised my older daughter Rihanna I was going to get a medal for her and in my mind I was thinking I can’t let her down”, said Farah, who flashed a thumbs-up sign to show he was OK. Should the 33-year-old manage it he would emulate Finnish great Lasse Viren, now the only man to complete the distance “double double”, by retaining the Olympic 5,000 and 10,000m titles.
He was beaten by Jeff Henderson of the U.S. and Luvo Manyonga of South Africa.
“At one point, I thought the race was over, I managed to get through it”, Farah told Sky Sports News HQ.
Ennis-Hill had to make do with silver in the heptathlon after gold in London.
“It’s never easy but everyone knows what I can do”, Farah said. It’s just so special.
Philip returns to the track for the 4x100m relay heats on Thursday.
Earlier in the day the men’s eight won gold and the women’s eight won silver in the rowing.
Cyclist Becky James won silver in the velodrome, saying afterwards that she “was so desperate for that medal”.
The medal marks a remarkable recovery for the 24-year-old after she recovered from a career-threatening knee injury and a cancer scare.
But when the surge was laid down, he couldn’t cover it like he did when he won silver in this event in 2012.
Katie Greves, Melanie Wilson, Frances Houghton, Polly Swann, Jessica Eddie, Olivia Carnegie-Brown, Karen Bennett, Zoe Lee and cox Zoe de Toledo crossed the line in six minutes 3.98 seconds – just 0.12 seconds ahead of third-placed Romania.
By winning, Scott Durant, Tom Ransley, Andrew T Hodge, Matt Gotrel, Pete Reed, Paul Bennett, Matt Langridge, William Satch and cox Phelan Hill helped Britain top the Rowing medal table.
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The men’s tennis tournament will also come to a conclusion, as Andy Murray and Juan Martin Del Potro go head-to-head for the gold.
