Mo Farah becomes first Briton to run 5,000m in under 13 minutes
Mo Farah set a British record last night in the 5,000m with a time of 12min 57.94sec at the Diamond League’s Weltklasse meet in Zurich. The previous record of 13min 0.41sec was set by David Moorcroft in 1982 at the Bislett Games in Oslo. The Weltklasse meet represents the first half of the finals for the 2010 IAAF Diamond League. The second half will take place at the Memorial van Damme meet in Bussels on 27 August.
Farah is more than pleased with his efforts and with the progress UK Athletics has made in recent years after the hiring of Charles Van Commenee as UK Athletics head coach.
“I’m just over the moon. To go under 13 minutes is an awesome feeling,” said the Somali-born Londoner. “When David Moorcroft ran that time, it was a world record, so that shows you how much athletics has moved forward.”
Breaking the record has proven that Farah’s extreme training method is working out. Farah abandoned his home in London for months in order to train at a high altitude in Kenya’s rift valley. The idea behind training in high altitudes is that as the athlete becomes used to the low oxygen levels, they will be able to perform better once they return to areas with higher oxygen levels. For the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002, many athletes arrived early in order to adjust to Utah’s low oxygen levels.
Even after breaking the British record, Farah was still only able to finish in fifth place. Tariku Bekele of Ethiopia, younger brother of Olympic champion Kenenise, won the race with a time of 12min 55.03sec.
Despite finishing outside the top three, Farah has proven that Britain now has a 5,000m runner that can challenge the world’s best in London at the 2012 Olympic Games. Part of the reason for this optimism is that Farah is less than three weeks removed from winning gold medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m at the European Championships in Barcelona. Farah is only the fifth athlete in history to win gold in both events at the European Championships.
Moorcroft was proud of Farah for breaking the record and showed no dismay about losing it. Moorcroft’s only regret was that Farah didn’t break the record while he was still the chief executive of UK Athletics. Moorcroft left UK Athletics in 2007. He provided track and field analysis for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the 2008 Olympic Games before taking a position as UK chairman of iGlobalFitness.
For all athletes, especially distance runners, there can be difficulty performing in such tight time lines. Britain’s athletes proved this to be true after a poor performance at the recent London Grand Prix, where many of the gold medal winners from the European Championships failed to reproduce those performances.
"It was fantastic run," said Moorcroft. "If he had done it early in the season when he was fresh it would have been normal, but to have done it after the physical and emotional exertions of Barcelona is pretty spectacular."
Zurich also saw Stephanie Twell run a personal best of 4min 2.54sec in the 1500m race. Kenya’s Nacy Jebet Langat, who won gold at the 2008 Games in Beijing, finished in first with a time of 4min 1.01sec.
Lisa Dobriskey, who recently announced her intention to compete in the Commonwealth Games this October in Delhi, finished fourth in the 1500m after dodging a pile-up and losing a shoe in the process. Dobriskey won silver at the World Championships in Berlin in 2009 and gold at the 2006 Commonwealth games in Melbourne.
While British athletes have had varying success over the past couple of years, no one can doubt that as a team they have improved significantly. Farah claiming the British record is just another example of Britain’s return to world class form in athletics.
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