Hicham El Guerrouj Honorary Citizen of Brussels

BrusselsHicham El Guerrouj received an early recompense for his consistent appearances in the Memorial Van Damme this afternoon as, just an hour or so after arriving here from Morocco, he was made an honorary citizen of the City of Brussels by the Lord Mayor.

This will be the tenth time that El Guerrouj competes here.

Originally scheduled to appear in the 3000 metres, where he would have been lined-up against the surprise winner of the World Championships 5000m, Eliud Kipchoge (KEN), El Guerrouj has instead elected to run his fetish 1500 metres.

“I really wanted to run the 3000m this time around,” said El Guerrouj, “ but I have just not recovered sufficiently from Paris. Doubling really took it out of me and I do not feel that I could live up to the expectations of the crowd here in Brussels over seven and half laps.

“I was really pleased with my performances in Paris, but there was a huge amount of pressure and stress for me at the Championships.

“When I was competing in the 1500, Morocco had no medals, so it was my responsibility to win a the gold and my fourth Championships title at the distance and it was a fabulous race that I ran.

“Then there was a lot of pressure from the press, with the competition with Mehdi Baala, who all the French press – and the spectators – were backing. Of course, after that was the 5,000 and I have to say that I was pleased with my performance there too.

“I guess that the only mistake that I made was to focus too much on Bekele and possibly to have broken away too soon. I think that if I had waited to 400 metres out to break then I could have won the race.

“As it is, I started to pull away at 600 metres and then the Kenyan caught me and I had to kick again, then I was concentrating on Bekele and Kipchoge just sprinted past me – he was going like crazy – I came back but just could not catch him on the line.”

A great favourite with the knowledgeable public in Brussels, El Guerrouj is aiming to run under 3:28 tomorrow and will be one of the major attractions in this edition of the Memorial.

But a lot of the public focus will be on a race that runs just over half the distance, though, as Mozambican Maria Mutola looks set for the biggest payday of her career.

This is the final leg of the IAAF Golden League for 2003 and as the only athlete still in contention for the jackpot, Mutola stands to clinch a cool one million dollars paycheque if she wins the last two-lap race of the series.

Barring major incidents, the cheque looks to be already hers, as the one athlete who might have spoilt Mutola’s play –Surreya Ayhan of Turkey, who was to compete in tomorrow’s race – will not be running tomorrow, leaving only Jolanda Ceplak of Slovenia as the most serious challenger to Mutola’s supremacy.

With that race won, Mutola still has to compete at the World Athletics Final in Monaco on 13-14 September to collect her payoff, but a win tomorrow guarantees her the Jackpot whatever the outcome of her race in Monaco.

“I am not specially nervous for this race,” said Mutola this morning. “I was certainly more stressed before the Olympic Final in Sydney because I really wanted the gold medal. But of course there is a lot of pressure. I have never run for such an amount of money and I am very excited about it.

“If I win the Jackpot, part of the money will go to my ‘Maria Mutola Foundation’ in Mozambique. It helps people to get education and learn about track and field. For instance, we have a 15 year-old girl following high school in Oregon and have a synthetic track in Mozambique thanks to the Foundation.”