Farah became the first British track and field athlete to win three Olympic gold medals when he won Saturday night’s race in a time of 27:05;17.
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Clocking 27:05.17 on the second evening of athletics action in Rio, the Briton beat Kenya’s Paul Tanui and Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola to ensure that his aims for another distance double remain on track.
“I wasn’t going to let it go”, Farah said after the race. “You saw big names go out of the qualification yet again – I was very almost close to being one of them”.
Then, amid the mayhem of tens of thousands of fans shouting in disbelief, Farah’s thoughts turned to his family and how he still needed a gold to keep everyone happy. “It made me emotional”. “That one moment could be it, I just had to get through it and believe in myself”.
Farah will now turn his attention to Wednesday where he will defend his 5,000m Olympic title.
If he wins that race, he will become the first man since Lasse Viren in 1976 to retain two Olympic distance titles. In the Heptathlon, Jessica Ennis-Hill (who hinted at retirement in a post-event interview) won silver, after being beaten into second place by a remarkable gold medal winning performance by Belgian Nafi Thiam.
In a tearful interview after the long jump final, Greg Rutherford said he was “gutted” to finish with a bronze medal.
“I came in here knowing it would be hard to do both, but I wanted to give it a shot”, he said.
A cute scene ensued as Rupp sort of veered to the right to nearly double back to wait for Farah to get up.
At the bell, Farah was ahead by a stride with Tanui and Tola keeping close attendance as he picked up the pace, the Kenyan moved to his shoulder and with 300m to go, surged in front.
“I knew I had something big in me”.
“As each lap went by I was getting more confident”.
Turning to the race, Farah said he had felt comfortable after restoring himself in the lead pack following his fall. I came here to win but couldn’t quite get it together. “I’m just happy that it didn’t affect the outcome for his race”.
There were no real surprises early on, with Farah sitting at the back as usual and Kamworor and Tanui near the front in the opening few minutes, behind the early leader of Luis Ostos.
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Britain had won five medals entering the final evening of competition at the Olympics Aquatics Centre – 100m breaststroke gold for Peaty, plus two silvers for Jazz Carlin, silver in the 4x200m freestyle relay and 200m individual medley silver for Siobhan O’Connor.
