All across Morocco they sat and listened for the news that Hicham El Guerrouj was Olympic champion. The Sydney Games would be his redemption song for the crash of four years previously. No one was more certain of bringing home gold.

He hadn't lost a 1,500 metre race since Atlanta, and, in between, he had lowered the world record to three minutes 26.0 seconds. But in a hazy and confused Olympic 1,500 metre final, El Guerrouj would run the worst race of his life.

The five months since that night in Sydney have been hard. He fell out with his manager, and spent over a month in near isolation in New York. Some of his fellow athletes wondered if he would recover. And he then lost a lot of popularity in Morocco by accepting a gift from the king, a move which raised accusations of feudalism.

This week, El Guerrouj arrived in Lisbon to put all those things behind him and regain his place at the top of world distance running. Indoor championships haven't figured strongly in his season of recent years, but the feeling now is that the sooner he is back winning, the sooner Sydney is forgotten.

"There is not a day still when I do not think about it," he says. "It was very hard to take, psychologically, and I am still seeing the images from that race. When I look back, I can see that I lost the race because of the pressure. Everyone was expecting me to win - my friends, family, and even the king."

But he makes no other excuses for the defeat. El Guerrouj is too affable and laid back to be any way bitter, primarily because he knows defeat will always be the exception. Coming off the track after yesterday's heats for the 3,000 metres, he was once again smiling and co-operative. The victory was as smooth as ever.

"Well I'm very pleased with my form now. It's a bit unusual to run this early in the morning, but in the last 400 metres I was able to impose myself. And then it did feel very easy."

No one expects anyone else to win in tomorrow's final.

Of course, El Guerrouj is exceptional. Born in Berkane, at the foothills of the Atlas mountains, he took over the middle distance mantle from his Algerian rival, Noureddine Morceli, after the 1996 Olympics. A year later, he began to assemble his horde of world records, starting with Eamon Coghlan's enduring indoor mile. At home in Morocco, he became as popular as the king.

Few athletes receive a greater mix of respect and reverence from the opposition than El Guerrouj. When he sat on the track after losing the gold medal to Noah Ngeny in Sydney, the entire field offered their hand in consolation. It was a rare glimpse of camaraderie in the selfish world of athletics.

After Atlanta, he had a picture of his fall on the wall of his small apartment, and he looked at it every day before training. After Sydney, he tore it down.

And he found another twist in the defeat when he returned to Morocco. The king had granted him 750 acres of orange groves near his home, as a form of consolation, but thousands of his fans accused the athlete of forgetting his roots, betraying his countrymen, and giving credibility to a feudal system of land ownership. State-employed farmers threatened to strike unless he handed back the land.

It was a situation started by King Hassan II, the late monarch, who nationalised all 520,000 acres of French colonial farms in the name of the Moroccan people, and originally granted El Guerrouj poorer, uncultivated land. Mohammed IV, who took the throne 18 months ago, then upgraded it to the prized orange orchards.

The country's leading newspaper, Al Ahdath Al Magrebia, said the deal was corrupt: "The lands plundered by colonialism should be returned to their rightful owners. They are meant to benefit the Moroccan masses, not be parcelled out piecemeal as kickbacks."

As with the Sydney Olympics, El Guerrouj is trying to put the incident behind him. "I flew the flag for Morocco, don't I deserve a reward?" he has said. He also insisted that he will invest some his estimated £2.7 million sterling prizemoney in cultivating the land using the best farming techniques.

So he is back competing, a little more distant from the glare of the home media and back at the championships where he won the 1,500 metres in both 1995 and 1997. In Gent last month, in what was his first race since Sydney, he narrowly missed the world two-mile record.

"So far I am very happy with my comeback, especially with Gent, as it was my first race since the Olympics." Then, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, he added, "and you all know what happened at the Olympics.

"That race was all about confidence, because I didn't have any confidence in my running for a long time. Until a few weeks ago, I didn't plan to run any indoor races at all. However, the main thing is that I have regained my confidence and I've rediscovered the sensation of racing again."

Now 27, he takes on a longer distance than his norm in Lisbon in order to test his endurance. And come the summer, he will again dabble at longer distances, including at the world championships in Edmonton, Canada, where he wants to run both the 1,500 and 5,000 metres.

But whenever he is cornered by the media, the Olympics remains high on the list of questions: "Okay, I didn't win a gold in either Atlanta or Sydney, but there are many strong runners who have never won an Olympic gold medal. Steve Cram for example. Every year I will run more and more longer distance races, and by the Athens Olympics I am certain I will be running only the 5,000 metres."

Of all the finals tomorrow afternoon, the 3,000 metres could easily be deemed the hardest to win. Olympic 5,000 metre champion Million Wolde looked completely untaxed when he finished second to El Guerrouj in the first heat. The Kenyan duo of Paul Bitok and Bernard Lagat are always difficult to beat. And, along with Mark Carroll, Mohammed Mourit, the world cross country champion from Belgium, is capable of a surprise.

But no one truly expects to see it.