WC Men's 5000M: Bekele Outkicks the Kicker

In the Athens Olympics, the 5000m final became a battle between the 10,000m gold medalist, Keninisa Bekele, and the 1500m gold medalist, Hicham El Gherrouj. I always felt that Bekele, who admitted being tired from the 10K, ran a race that played into the hands of El Gherrouj. The pace was slow until the end, and the 1500 meter man had the championship kick.

In the 5000m final in Berlin, Bekele once again faced a 1500 meter medalist with a superb kick, American Bernard Lagat, but this time he knew what to do. His formula for winning the gold medal went like this:

63.03
62.38
61.22
57.58
26.08

Those, of course, are Bekele's splits for his final four and a half laps. His final mile was ~3:58.8; his final 800 was ~1:54.3. And he just kept getting faster.

Lagat, running despite a spike wound suffered in the 1500 final, must have believed that the race was playing into his hands. Indeed, there is no shame in winning silver against the greatest 5K/10K runner in history. But Bekele employed a strategy perfected by the great Lasse Viren -- that of running the last mile at a gradually accelerating pace. Instead of waiting until the last moment and then wagering all on a big last lap, Bekele made sure that each lap was faster, subtly draining his rivals' anaerobic reserves. Lagat was able to briefly take the lead in the final straight, but the devastating kick was only a very good kick. Bekele, it turned out, had a better one.

Men's 5000 final - Universal Sports

There's a tactical lesson here: in a race against someone with a superb finish, it's madness to run fast at the beginning, slow in the middle, and then kick against the kicker. The long drive to the finish succeeds where the desperate run from the start fails. It is the strategy El Gherrouj used against Lagat in the Athens 1500, and it was the strategy that Bekele used against Lagat in the Berlin 5000m. Of course, maybe you have to be one of the greatest runners ever to pull it off!