At the start of this season only the virtually insane would not have named Hicham El Guerrouj as the automatic favourite for this event. The incomparable Moroccan won his fourth consecutive World title last summer with practised ease and then failed by a whisker to take the 5000m crown as well.
But then, no-one thought he could lose in 2000 either until Kenya’s Noah Ngeny crept past him in the finishing straight. Before Sydney, El Guerrouj had lost just one race over 1500m or the Mile since falling in the 1996 Olympic final in Atlanta.
He has hardly lost in the four years since Sydney either, but his defeat at the Golden League meeting in Rome on 2 July this year ended a 30-race win streak, and raised a few question marks. Is the greatest 1500m/miler of our generation going to fail in Olympic year yet again?
El Guerrouj, who is the IAAF World Rankings number one athlete in the event, explained that he had been suffering from breathing problems caused by an allergy, and he duly returned to form, and top of the world leaders’ board, with a 3:29.18 victory in Belgium on 31 July. But the doubts resurfaced last Friday when he was beaten by the Sydney bronze medallist, Bernard Lagat, in Zurich in the fastest race of the year.
Lagat’s winning time of 3:27.40, 0.24 ahead of the Moroccan, means that El Guerrouj is far from the ‘dead cert’ he has been in other years. Besides his Zurich victory, Lagat also showed impressive form to win in Paris on 23 July when he clocked 3:29.21. Close behind Lagat that night was compatriot Timothy Kiptanui, and together with Isaac Songok, who was third in Zurich with a personal best 3:30.99, they make a formidable trio.
But El Guerrouj will also face stiff opposition from his former countryman Rashid Ramzi, now running for Bahrain. Ramzi beat him in Rome where he set an Asian record of 3:30.25. Then there’s last year’s World silver and bronze medallists, Mehdi Baala of France and Ivan Heshko of Ukraine. Baala is the fastest European this year, clocking 3:31.25 when he finished third in Rome.
Portugal’s Rui Silva, fifth in Rome this year and in last year’s World Athletics Final, but only 12th in Zurich; and the USA’s new young hope, Alan Webb, could also figure. Both have run under 3:33, as has Britain’s Commonwealth Games champion Michael East (3:32.37 in Rome), and the remarkable Wondimu Mulugetu, a 19 year-old Ethiopian who set a new national record of 3:31.13 in Heusden.
MB
