Electronic Telegraph Saturday 30 September 2000 El Guerrouj lets biggest prize of all slip through his fingers By Sebastian Coe THE unthinkable happened yesterday. On the biggest stage of them all and in the cruellest of ways Hicham El Guerrouj found out that the Olympic Games do not respect reputation. He walked forlornly from a stadium that had promised less than two weeks ago to be the venue for his anointment as the greatest 1,500 metres runner of them all. After four years of domination at the distance he had only a silver medal and a sackful of world records. Back in July, I stood in the infield at Crystal Palace barely four paces away from El Guerrouj, who was on his way to a sublime 3min 45sec mile. He went past me with only one lap to go and I swear that I could not hear a breath from the Moroccan as he entered the last lap. Noah Ngeny, from Kenya, who finished in silver medal position and in the wake of El Guerrouj at the World Championships in Seville last year, was chasing but knew even at this point that the game was up. One lap later and 15 metres clear, El Guerrouj crossed the line even less stressed than he was 54 seconds earlier. Ngeny and the rest of the field walked from the track knowing that El Guerrouj was at his imperious best and that there was little chance that they would be chasing anything more than the silver medal in Sydney. I followed El Guerrouj's progress to Berlin, where the record books will show in years to come that he won his last race before the Olympics in a creditable 3min 30sec. What the record books will not show that night was that he looked listless and heavy legged. I presented him with the medal and in my broken French gently suggested that he looked a little tired. There had been talk too of a virus about the time of a sub-standard performance in Brussels a week earlier. "I will be OK in Sydney," he said. "I need a few weeks to relax in Australia." The heat and semi-final here in Sydney showed nothing other than his assured passage into the final. Adil El Kaouch, his team mate, training partner and pace-maker in the World Championship final in Seville last year, did not make it past the opening round. It was to Youssef Baba, who did qualify, that the back-room team turned when planning El Guerrouj's strategy for the final. In reality, he probably had no greater say in this complicity than Kaouch in Seville or than Ben Jipcho in Mexico in 1968 who did the same job for Kip Keino when ending Jim Ryun's 'American Dream.' In cycling they call them Domestiques. On the Grand Prix circuit they call them Pace Makers. In Morocco they call them King Makers. With little more than half the first lap completed Baba shouldered his divine duties. Less than 400 metres further down the track he stepped aside, leaving El Guerrouj a little under 900 metres to be spoken of in the same breath as Herb Elliott. Ngeny followed in his footsteps. It was the same path he had trodden so many times before in the past two years, waiting for the imperceptible and strength-sapping surges to the tape. With one lap to go, Ngeny was still there and, more worryingly for El Guerrouj, there were others there, too. So sure was I of his supremacy, I presumed he had decided to go for glory from 300 metres out. A touch of the accelerator shortly afterwards gave comfort to my view. I waited for the next injection of pace but with 200 metres to go and with Ngeny still looking menacingly comfortable, El Guerrouj glanced nervously up to the big screen. It must have dawned on him that his coveted Olympic title was in danger and that the title was in danger of taking an easterly direction to Nairobi. Ngeny hit the front with 80 metres to go and El Guerrouj again glanced up at the screen, this time not for the inboard computer to assess co-ordinates for gold but the likelihood of securing silver as Ngeny's countryman Bernard Lagat challenged. Ngeny crossed the line to reassert Kenyan dominance in middle-distance running. El Guerrouj was left in a state of shock. Just 30 seconds later he was being comforted by his Kenyan assassins, who were part of one of the biggest upsets of the modern Games. The experts in their commentary points sat crouched behind their television monitors and screeched their incredulity. Olympians like Steve Cram, Brendan Foster and Spaniard Jose Abascal looked on beside them. Their faces were a picture of disbelief and a pained sorrow. Eamonn Condon WWW.RunnersGoal.com
