“I remember seeing Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat in Sydney and wondering if I could become Olympic champion at the time”, said Farah of the battle between the Ethiopian and the Kenya at the 2000 Olympics, which Gebrselassie won by ninth hundredths of a second.
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Gebrhiwet looked to challenge him at the bell as the race turned into a last-lap burn-up, but there remains no one who can match Farah’s speed over the final 400m.
His team-mate Andrew Butchart finished an impressive sixth in a personal best 13:08.61.
“The guys pushed on and at the beginning I felt a little bit exhausted and was thinking, “Oh no”, and then I got going again. I’m now officially the most accomplished amateur boxer we have ever had, like ever, and it’s such an unbelievable feeling”. The day you feel you can’t see that straight ahead of you, that’s when you have to hang up. At times it’s hard and the light turns off, as you miss your family, you miss your kids and you want a normal life. It’s tough, the guys make it tough.
China won their third Olympic Games women’s volleyball gold with a 3-1 victory over Serbia.
Mo Farah plans to end his track career after next year’s World Championships in London – but has not ruled out running the marathon at Tokyo 2020. And, boy, will he be missed.
“[In] 2017, I’d like to end it on the track, and then we’ll see what we can do in the marathon”, he said.
Farah had stated ahead of the race that he needed this fourth gold for his son Hussein, with his three others dedicated to his older three children. Only the former Soviet Union – with four golds – has been more successful in Olympics women’s volleyball than China.
And the last member of the Farah brood has not been left out. “I wished for just one medal as a junior”.
He said: “Anything is possible, but for me it is up to the public and the people”.
The nation’s gold medal tally stands at 26, with wins for boxer Nicola Adams and canoeist Liam Heath boosting the British team’s haul on the penultimate day of the Games.
Matt Centrowitz produced the biggest upset when he beat defending champion Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria to become America’s first 1 500m champion in more than a century.
She told the BBC: “The gold rush continues”.
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Farah, who is now tied with Sir Matthew Pinsent and swimmer Paulo Radmilovic on four gold medals, only trails Olympic legends Sir Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Ben Ainslie, in Britain’s all-time medal list. “I just really wanted a real team effort”.
