El Guerrouj seeks his place in Olympic history

At about 15 minutes before midnight tonight, local time, Hicham El Guerrouj will know whether he is destined to go down in history as the greatest ever 1500m runner never to win an Olympic title. There are a few candidates for the post already – Roger Bannister, Jim Ryun, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Said Aouita....

Unsurpassed Dominance

But the Morrocan has dominated the world over the last eight years like no other athlete before him. Not only does he hold the World record for this event, as well as that for the Mile and the 2000m, but he has recorded seven of the 10 fastest times in history, and suffered only four losses since he tripped and fell at the bell in the Olympic final in Atlanta in 1996.

Nor is he just a master of speed who can’t win championships, for El Guerrouj has won four consecutive World titles. He has held the IAAF crown since he was first anointed here in Athens in 1997. At a press conference last week El Guerrouj called the city his “birth place” as an athlete. Perhaps, after losing in Atlanta and, even more surprisingly, in Sydney four years ago, he feels it’s his destiny to win at the home of the Games.

El Guerrouj himself has said he wants to be “remembered as the greatest miler who ever lived”. “I have won every other title,” he says. “The Olympic Games is the only thing missing from my career.”

Battling against history

But what if he doesn’t win? After all, only two pre-Games favourites in the last 40 years have actually taken the Olympic 1500m gold. What’s more, a decline in El Guerrouj’s powers has been visible this year. Never before has he lost two races in a season, and it’s some time since he broke a World record. So what will it mean for his legacy, for the place in athletics history he is so keen to cement?

Ovett's appraisal

Steve Ovett never won an Olympic 1500m gold, despite being one of the dominating forces of his day over the distance. When he lost to fellow-Briton Sebastian Coe in Moscow in 1980 it was his first defeat at that distance or the Mile for more than three years, a run of 41 victories. And, like El Guerrouj in 2000, Ovett went into the final in 1984 as the World record holder.

Of course, in 1980 Ovett had already won the 800m gold and he says that made all the difference to how he felt about losing the final he was favourite to win.

“I think it would have been a terrible disappointment if I had not won anything,” he says. “If you have an Olympic title to your name, it makes a huge difference. Even me, now, I find people do respect that one single performance for some reason or other.

“El Guerrouj will probably be worrying that maybe this will be his last chance, but at least he’s had three shots at it which is more than most have. People like Jim Ryun, and many of the other great milers that never won an Olympic Games, only had one or two goes at it at most.

“El Guerrouj has dominated the world for eight or nine years, but if he doesn’t have that rubber stamp to his name, that gold to his achievements, people will always say, ‘Oh well, what happened in the Olympics.’”

We all have to deal with it

Ovett remembers dropping out of the 1984 final with breathing problems but believes the loss suffered that year by his teammate Steve Cram, the World champion at the time, was much harder to take. Cram had been a footnote in the 1980 final and ran again in Seoul in 1988, becoming the only man to run in three Olympic 1500m finals, a record that El Guerrouj will match tomorrow.

“I’m sure that Steve’s loss to Seb in Los Angeles, was a major blow,” says Ovett. “I would think it is a legacy he regets. But we all have to deal with it. And Steve ‘s no less an athlete because he never won the Olympics. Some people never do.

“El Guerrouj does seem to have a strong sense of his place in history, which is fair enough, but all our places fade in time, that’s just a natural progression. Yes, it’s nice to win an Olympics, it is a stamp of approval on an athlete’s CV, but there has been a number of world class and super athletes who have never won an Olympics.”

Different eras

The question of whether El Guerrouj’s record already makes him the “greatest ever” is one Ovett believes can not really be answered. “I think it’s impossible to compare now with the past,” he says. “You can only run against your contemporaries. If you look back at people like Herb Elliot, he retired early when he’d hardly run against anybody.”

The event tends to progress in eras, says Ovett. “Aouita came at the end of our era, [Nourredine] Morceli came at the end of his era. It’s a sort of ladder, and people step from one rung to another. To compare one with another is just ridiculous.”

In 2000, El Guerrouj was so overwhelming a favourite that the thought of him losing seemed “unbelievable”. For that reason, Ovett believes the Morrocan’s “slightly faltering” season this year will actually help him tonight.

“The times when he’s been beaten are when he’s seemed slightly tense, in Olympic finals. It could be third time lucky I suppose.

“He’s not coming into this race as the absolute favourite, so there’s not so much pressure on him. He’s got the advantage of coming back into form because of being stung earlier on in the year.”

Thinking for themselves

Ovett believes El Guerrouj can be denied again, however, but only if the other runners are prepared to “take the race by the scruff of the neck”.

“I’m not sure any of those guys are able to do that sort of thing,” he says. “They are so used to being in a procession behind El Guerrouj in paced races that they’ve lost the ability to think for themselves. Your saw that in the qualifying rounds. A lot of athletes there looked totally confused when it was a slow race. They don’t know how to handle themselves and I think that’s the problem.

“It will probably be the classic El Guerrouj scenario, where he takes it out with a lap and a half to go, kicks in hard to the bell, and then kicks in even harder from there. I could write the script now. It just depends whether anybody else wants to change it.”

There is a way to beat him though, says Ovett, now a commentator for Canadian TV. “I’d get in front of him before he goes and make him run wider than he wants to. He’s been running 53 second last laps,and that’s not unheard of, even in my day. But if you run 53 and you have to do it in lane two you have to run the equivalent of 51. And not many can do that.

“So there’s ways of beating the guy. It’s just about out thinking him. But no one seems to want to do that. They all wait for him to go and then try to beat him. But that means they’ve got to run 52-point-something and not many can do that.”

Bekele unbeatable

As for El Guerrouj’s chances in the 5000m, should he go for it, Ovett simply can’t see him beating Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele. Ovett himself moved up to the 5000m when his middle distance days were over, with some success – he won the Commonwealth Games in 1986. But, he says, it’s not an easy switch to make.

“In my era the 5000 was on the cusp of changing to the super heroes we’ve got now,” he says. “But if he does move up, he’ll be going in off the deep end.”

The 5000m heats start on Wednesday evening. Before then, there’s the little matter of El Guerrouj’s place in Olympic history to sort out.

Matthew Brown for the IAAF