Farah, 32, recorded a final lap of 54.15 to pull away from Kenyan challengers Geoffrey Kamworor and Paul Tanui to seal his sixth successive global distance.
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Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt makes his bow in the 100m heats on the opening day of the World Athletics Championships on Saturday (today), when Briton Mo Farah will bid for an unprecedented six consecutive global track distance titles in the 10,000m.
But despite the rest of the field throwing everything they could at him, Farah didn’t panic and crossed the line in 27:01.13 minutes for gold.
He kicked to the front with a lap to go and, although the Kenyans tried to respond, they simply could not match his finishing speed as the Briton came home with more than half a second to spare.
“So many times I almost got tripped, almost went down but thank God I did not go down”, Farah told the BBC in a trackside interview.
One notable absentee from Saturday’s action, featuring three medal events, will be New Zealand’s four-time world champion Valerie Adams, who misses the women’s shot put after failing to regain her form sufficiently after complicated double surgery on her shoulder and elbow.
“It was just a matter of hanging in there and hopefully it didn’t take too much out of me because it is not easy running in this heat and doing 27 minutes. I don’t know what to think about it”.
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With a series of allegations made against his coach Alberto Salazar – there is no suggestion Farah has done anything wrong – this has been a hard summer for the man who won the 10,000m and 5,000m double at both the last Worlds in Moscow and the London Olympics. It’s important I started the team well. “That’s what I’m good at”.
