Britain’s Mo Farah is golden again in Rio.
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Surviving a fall when they were approaching halfway, Farah completed the first part of his bid for the Olympics double-double when he used his superior finishing everyone knows about to land the gold in 27:05.17 with Tanui, who took bronze at last year’s World Championships in Beijing upgrading to silver in 27:05.64.
Talking about the fall, he said: “When you go down, you get really emotional and I just tried to pick myself back up and believe in myself”.
“I thought going into the race an Olympic record could have been broken”.
Cyclist Laura Trott also made history on day eight of the Games, becoming the first British woman to win three gold medals after her success in the women’s team pursuit.
Farah continued his unprecedented spell of long-distance domination by landing his eighth straight global crown, but he did it the hard way after falling to the track following a trip from training partner Galen Rupp. Those feats led to Farah being selected as the track and field athlete of the year by the British Olympic Association.
“I know many British athletes who try to even win one medal or never get one in their career, so to say I could win three or four would be incredible”.
Farah held his place midway through the race after his tumble before pushing back into second with a quarter of the race to go.
As the pace increased in the final laps and the leading bunch lost numbers, the race descended into a winner-takes-all dash for gold between Farah and Kenya’s Paul Tanui, with the Briton always looking favourite to come out on top.
It was simply wonderful distance running from Mo Farah. It looked touch and go at one point and we didn’t think he had enough left in the tank to power through to the front of the group.
Britain’s Jessica Ennis-Hill celebrates after she won silver in the Women’s Heptathlon. Since winning the 2012 Olympic 5000m gold medal, he has added two 5000m world championships to his resume. I thought about all the hard work and that it could all be gone in a minute.
A cute scene ensued as Rupp sort of veered to the right to nearly double back to wait for Farah to get up.
#CAN’s Mohammed Ahmed runs out of gas in the 10,000m race.
Farah has three Olympic gold medals now from two Olympics and is preparing for the defence of his 5,000 title next week. I just have to spend some time with my family and relax.
Rutherford failed to retain his Olympic long jump title, settling for bronze behind American Jeff Henderson and South Africa’s Luvo Manyonga.
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Beyond saying again that he “supports clean sport”, which he did in his media conference, Farah can do little more to make the topic go away than keep winning and passing his doping tests. I wasn’t going to let it go.
