ATHLETICS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: THERE WAS no argument this time. Having been accused of just sitting and kicking his way to his 10,000 metres gold medal last Monday, Kenenisa Bekele came to the old Olympic Stadium yesterday and as if on cue proved that he can actually win races any way he wants to.
If there was a better 5,000 metres in the history of these championships no one here could recall it.
He led practically every step of the way. He closed with a 3:56 mile. He climaxed it with a thrilling home-stretch duel with the defending champion Bernard Lagat of the US. Anything else? His time of 13:17.09 wasn’t exactly earth-shattering but it could hardly have been a more of an impressive performance even if he had broken his own world record.
In the process Bekele becomes the first Ethiopian to win the World Championship 5,000 metres – and the first man r to win a 5,000-10,000 metres double.
His famous predecessor, Haile Gebrselassie, tried it back in 1993, but lost out in the shorter race, and when Bekele’s Olympic double of last year is factored in, plus his 16 World Cross Country gold medals, individual and team, his 24 major championship gold medals is simply unparalleled.
“It was a very hard race,” he admitted afterwards, and no one was denying it.
“Everybody was very strong, so I’m just so happy I won it in the end. But Berlin has been a special place. The people here in the stadium really helped me. I’ll never forget this race.”
In fairness Lagat gave him a real run for the title. At 34 the former Kenyan turned American has plenty of life in the legs, even after taking the bronze medal over 1,500 metres last Wednesday. He, in fact, edged ahead of Bekele about halfway down the homestretch, but it was Bekele who still had the extra gear, and probably the extra desire too.
Lagat was close at 13:17.33, and the race for bronze was close too, with James Kwalia – another former Kenya now running for Qatar – just about holding off Moses Kipsiro of Uganda.
Britain’s Mo Farah still ran a good race to take seventh in 13:19.69, with the other American, Matt Tegenkamp, finishing another place back in 13:20.23. They could never have imagined it, but Bekele had single-handedly delivered Ethiopia their only two gold medals of the championships, when they were expected to win at least double that.
For the second time in the championships their big hope in the women’s 5,000 metres, Meseret Defar, was run out of the top two by the Kenyans, with the tiny Vivian Cheruiyot taking the gold medal there in 14:57.97.
Having also won the women’s 10,000 metres and the men’s 3,000 metres steeplechase, Kenya thus ended up third on the medal table, behind the US and Jamaica, and ahead of former athletic superpowers such as Russia, Britain and Germany.
The host nation, however, weren’t complaining. Having failed to win a single medal at the Beijing Olympics last summer, Germany were fearing the worst here, but instead surpassed all expectations by winning nine medals, including a surprise bronze in the women’s 4x100 metres relay.
All week they’d dominated the throwing events the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the good old days of the GDR, although their medal favourite in the women’s hammer, Betty Heilder, was no match for Anita Wlodarczyk of Poland, who on Saturday afternoon produced the third world record of the championships with her winning throw of 77.96 metres (earning her a €100,000 bonus in the process).
It was an amazing sight, for more reasons than one. Jumping across the track towards her coach to celebrate her record, Wlodarczyk twisted her ankle badly, and was forced to watch the rest of the competition with her ankle wrapped and heavily iced.
Luckily for her, Heidler couldn’t quite match it, although her final throw of 77.12 metres was the fifth best of all time, and the farthest non-winning throw ever in the event.
Sometimes not even the wild support can get you those extra few centimetres.
There were big fears in China as well that all the effort they’d put in to winning medals at last year’s Olympics had disappeared. Then yesterday morning, against most predictions, they won their first and only gold medal in the women’s marathon thanks to Xue Bai, who it has to be said, looked remarkably comfortable running around the streets of Berlin.
The favourites gradually fell away (literally, in the case of Ethiopai’s Dire Tune) from a large group at 25 kilometres, when Nailiya Yulamanova of Russia put in the first decisive surge. Soon it boiled down to Bai, Yoshimi Ozaki of Japan, and Aselefech Mergia of Ethiopia, but there was no holding the Chinese woman on the finishing stretch towards the Brandenburg Gate, and she took gold in 2:25.15, with Ozaki second in 2.25.25 and Mergia third in 2:25.32.
