Ville Ritola leads Paavo Nurmi at the 1928 Olympics (© Getty Images)
For students of distance running the date of 10 July 1924 is a magical one inscribed forever in the mind. Like 19.32, 8.90, or 6 May 1954, it’s one of those combinations of letters and numbers that are indelibly printed in the annals of our sport.
On that day, at the Stade de Colombes in Paris, Paavo Nurmi achieved one of the greatest feats in the history of athletics. Within the space of just 42 minutes the incredible Finn won both the Olympic 1500m and 5000m titles, breaking the Olympic record in both events. He’d run the shorter distance only twice that year before the Games.
Remarkably, two days later, he returned to win a third gold medal in the cross country race, run over 10,000m in the most punishing conditions, and later enjoyed a fourth victory in the team event. He had hoped to defend his 10,000m track title too, but the Finnish Federation refused to register him. Nurmi, somewhat peaved by their decision, returned to Finland and set a world record that lasted for 13 long years.
All told, Nurmi ran seven races in six days in Paris and dominated the 1924 Games like nobody has ever done since, or is ever likely to. He remains the only man to double successively at events straddling the middle and long distances.
It was a truly momentous achievement that no-one has come close to matching. Until now.
El Guerrouj and Bekele eye same second gold
Hicham El Guerrouj has had a little longer than 42 minutes to recover from his thrilling victory in the 1500m final which finished just a few minutes before midnight on Tuesday evening. But not much. Following a sleepless night, the excited Moroccan trotted through his 5000m heat on the very next evening less than 20 hours after winning that much coveted first Olympic gold.
Three days later, in the final on Saturday, he will attempt to become the first man since Nurmi to achieve the “impossible” double. As an avid student of the sport, he is well aware of the historical significance of his goal. He knows how tough it will be too.
Jogging along beside him in the same heat on Wednesday was Ethiopia’s 10,000m champion, Kenenisa Bekele, an athlete tipped to become one of the greatest distance runners of all time. Bekele’s victory in the 10,000m final last Friday night was itself a poignant moment in the sport, the point when the old Emperor of the track, Haile Gebrselassie, was replaced by the new king.
When El Guerrouj and Bekele race in the 5000m final on Saturday it will be one of those rare occasions in sport when specialist champions meet on middle ground – a clash between the greatest miler of our generation and the world’s greatest long distance runner.
Bekele, of course, is already a double winner – a treble double winner in fact – having won both the long and short course World cross country championships for the last three years. But if he wins on Sunday his name will truly go down in athletics history, for those runners who have achieved the 5 and 10 double at a single Olympic Games are all legendary names in the history of the sport.
First, there was the original “Flying Finn” Hannes Kolehmainen, who won both titles in 1912. He went on to win the marathon in 1920, the year that Nurmi, known as the “Phantom Finn”, almost won the distance double himself. Nurmi took a silver in the 5000m that year, beaten by the cigarette-smoking Frenchman Joseph Guillemot, and three days later won gold in the 10. Eight years on, in Amsterdam, he finished his Olympic career with the same combination, beaten in the 5000m this time by his great rival Ville Ritola.
Finns continued to dominate the distances through the 1930s, but no-one could win both, Lauri Virtanen coming closest when he won two bronze medals in 1932.
After the Second World War came the remarkable Czech, Emil Zatopek. The 10,000m champion in London in 1948, Zatopek arrived in Helsinki, the home of distance running, in 1952 and won not only the 5000m and 10,000m, but famously went on to claim the marathon gold as well just for good measure. Still the only man ever to win all three, Zatopek said that he ran the 5000m merely to keep himself busy while waiting for the marathon, an event he’d never run before.
Zatopek was succeeded four years later by the steely Ukraine-born Russian Soviet, Vladimir Kuts, a man who never gave anything less than every ounce of effort in every race he ran. He too, won both long distance track races, breaking the Olympic record both times. Kuts’ victory in the 5000m was by a massive 11 seconds, a performance that’s still regarded as the most dominant piece of 5000m running in Olympic history.
In the 1970s, the Finns returned to their former glories when Lasse Viren not only took the distance double in 1972 in Munich but repeated the feat, against all the odds, at the Montreal Games four years later. He’s the only man ever to do it twice, and the story of how he fell during the Munich 10,000m, yet still managed to win in a World record time has become part of Olympic folklore.
In 1980, it was the turn of Gebrselassie’s great inspiration, the tiny Ethiopian Miruts Yifter. Having missed the Montreal Games because of the boycott, he won both golds in Moscow, introducing the world to Ethiopian team tactics and earning his nickname 'the Shifter' with a 54.9 last 400m at the end of the 10,000.
No-one has achieved it since – indeed, as the tracks have hardened and the schedule tightened, few have even tried. If Bekele triumphs on Sunday, he will indeed be a worthy successor to the great “Yifter the Shifter”.
A victory for El Guerrouj would be an even greater achievement. After waiting eight long years for his first Olympic gold, to become the first in 80 to win such an historical pair would be extraordinary.
The two ran through a rehearsal at the World Championships in Paris last year, when the El Guerrouj persuaded the organisers to change the timetable so he could compete at both distances. “Beating Bekele in this event is a real challenge for me, but anything can happen,” he said before that race a year ago. “Stay tuned and you may see a surprise in the final.”
We did. El Guerrouj beat Bekele, but he was beaten too when Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge dipped like a sprinter to deny the Moroccan at the line. Last year, as this, both men had been superb in their gold medal winning runs, displaying their renowned turns of speed to win their specialist events. But in 2003, El Guerrouj had run a 5000m and set the second fastest time of that year.
This year, he hasn’t run a single 5 apart from his heat, and he’s been in less dominating form at his own distance than usual, suffering from allergies and lost training.
Bekele on the other hand, has been in even more scintillating shape than ever. The 22 year-old smashed Gebrselassie’s 5000m and 10,000m World records in the space of ten days early in the season. And he finished his 10,000m final on Friday with such blistering speed that it’s difficult to see anyone beating him.
Bekele’s last lap in the 10k was clocked at 53.02, only 1.11 seconds slower than El Guerrouj recorded during his epic nattle against Bernard Lagat at the end of the 1500m.
Gebrselassie says Bekele will win. “He is in such great shape, I’m sure he has more chance than the others,” he says. Geb should know, having spent the last three months chasing him down the pot-holed training track in Addis Ababa where they have been preparing for the Olympics.
Should Bekele triumph on Saturday, he will achieve one of the few feats Gebrselassie never managed. Despite a string of four consecutive world 10,000m titles and two Olympic golds at the longer distance, Gebsrselassie never attempted the double. In Sydney, as here, he was already suffering from injury before running the 10k, and in Atlanta doing the double would have meant running two 10ks followed by three rounds of the 5000m.
“It was just too much,” says Gebrselassie, who ended the 1996 10,000m final with bloody feet. “Now the 10,000m is run direct and the 5k is just run twice. There is a much better chance.”
Steve Ovett is one of the few great milers of the modern era to move up to 5,000m with some success, winning a Commonwealth gold medal at the longer distance in 1986. El Guerrouj, he says, will find history beyond him on Saturday.
“I can’t see him beating Bekele, no,” he says. “Moving up to five is not an easy route. In my era the 5000 was on the cusp of changing to the super heroes we’ve got now.
“I think he’s got to accept the simple fact of life that he is a miler. But if he does win, it really will be going off the deep end.”
Off the deep end, into history. Remember the date.
Matthew Brown for the IAAF
