Daegu day 9, kirui is the toughest – phew!!

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By Len Johnson

Don’t worry about the athletes actually doing the business. Oh, Sally Pearson’s 12.28 is mighty impressive; as is Usain Bolt’s 19.40; so, too, the fourth gold medal in five outings for Dwayne Phillips.

But the people who have really performed over the last couple of days of the world championships have been the Local Organising Committee marketing department.

The large gush of wind you may just have detected was the collective sigh of relief from said LOC marketers. Phew – (add exclamation marks in whatever number you think appropriate here).

Having safely seen off the curse of the cover on day eight (a large bouquet of flowers is understood to have been received by Sally Pearson today), day nine of the championships finally saw the street advertising validated.

All over Daegu are display signs based on the traditional Olympic motto – citius, altius, fortius; faster, higher, stronger in its English form.  Who’s the fastest, who’s the highest, who’s the toughest. Like the program cover, they haven’t quite delivered.

Until now, that is. But more of that in a minute.

‘Who’s the fastest’, featured Bolt and his Jamaican teammate Asafa Powell. OK, Bolt delivered in the 200, but it was clearly aimed at the 100 as Powell does not run the longer sprint. Powell, of course, never got to the line. Bolt never left it in the final.

‘Who’s the highest’. Well Yelena isinbayeva (sixth in the pole vault) and Blanka Vlasic (silver in the high jump) – no joy there either.

There may be a throws-related poster, but I have yet to see it (I do a very restricted number of shopping trips). If there was a ‘Who’s the strongest’, apologies for missing it.

But each day from day one I have caught a bus from the media village to the stadium, driving past a corner featuring a ‘Who’s the toughest’ poster. The man on the poster is Abel Kirui, and in Sunday morning’s marathon the 29-year-old Kenyan proved conclusively that he was the toughest man going round in Daegu.

Kirui won his second consecutive marathon gold medal in 2:07:38, joining another Abel, Spain’s Abel Anton (1997-99) and Jaouad Gharib of Morocco (2003-05) as two-time winners. All three have done it in successive championships, which is not, I suppose, that surprising. Gharib is still going round, though he was a ‘dnf’ Sunday morning.

Kenya’s Vincent Kipruto was second, giving Kenya a second successive 1-2 finish after Kirui and Emannuel Mutai did it in Berlin. The margin of victory, 2:28, was the greatest ever. Ethiopia’s Feyisa Lillesa, 2:10:32, took the bronze.

With three in the first five, Kenya easily took the World Cup title from Japan and Morocco. Kenya’s three averaged almost four minutes faster than Japan’s, which shows what happens when a country like Kenya starts to take championships marathons seriously.

Those are the bare facts. What they don’t tell you is that, for the third championships in a row, a Kenyan man simply ran hard until his opponents were run off their feet. It was Sammy Wanjiru with the marvellous run in Beijing, followed by Kirui in Berlin and now Kirui again.

The Daegu course was two 15km loops followed by a 12.95km loop. Kirui ran the first half of the race in 65:07, the second in 62:31. He ran the first lap in 46:28, followed by a 44:15. His fastest 5k split was 14:18 from 25 to 30km.

But it was 20 to 35 which held the key to the race and demonstrated how Kirui just ran till they – everyone else, that is – dropped. At 20, he accelerated from the 2:10-pace which had prevailed untul then. Five kilometres later, run in 14:43, there were only five men left in contention.

Not a bad group, they were. All of them were 2:05 men – Kirui (2:05:04), his teammates Vincent Kipruto (2:05:13) and Eliud Kiptanui (2:05:39), and Ethiopia’s Fayisa Lilesa (2:05:23).

In both men’s and women’s marathon, the third five kilometres of the 15km loop has been the quickest. On a course with little undulation, the first five kilometres does rise slightly and the final five falls correspondingly. Kirui now ‘tore’ down the hill at a breakneck 14:18 to 30km.

Not surprisingly, no-one could stay with him. After the two 15km laps he had a lead of 11 seconds. Still he kept up the relentless pace, now running144:40 back ‘up’ the hill. By 35km, he was 54 seconds up on Kipruto and Lilesa. The impact of Kirui’s assault can be seen from the fact that these two ran 15:39 and 15:43, respectively.

Next to finish after the medallists was Morocco’s Abderrahime Bouramdane in 2:10:55. After being dropped by the surge – 53 seconds behind at 30km - he fought back well.

So two world championships  from two for Abel Kirui, who paced Haile Gebrselassie to his 2:03:59 world record in Berlin three years ago. He has come a long way since. If there is a better marathoner in the world right now, I want to see him run.

The championships’ final night concluded with a stunning world record men’s 4x100 relay win by Jamaica, which saw the USA fall and Great Britain fail to finish. Bolt, and Jamaica, were sweetly clear of any trouble, however, and the great man belted along the straight to bring his team home in 37.04, 0.06 under the world record set in Beijing three years ago. And Asafa Powell was sidelined.

There was also a great 5000 metres in which Mo Farah, so narrowly beaten in a great 10,000 a week ago, controlled the pace for the last three laps to win. Bernard Lagat chased him home despairingly but, for the second time in two championships, found that waiting for the last move does not always pay off.

Lagat was forced wide when he did move off the final bend, being pushed out into lane three. To be fair to both, he has had the better of Lagat in other races this year, so may have won in any circumstances.

Imane Merga, third across the line, was disqualified at the time of writing, apparently for running some 15 metres on the infield. His teammate Dejen Gebrmeskel was elevated to the bronze medal.

Before the disqualification, the first four men ran finished between 13:23.36 and 13:23.92. But no-one could get around Farah with his 52.61 final lap.

It was reminiscent of the famous 1976 Olympic race when Lasse Viren held out Dick Quax, Klaus-Peter Hildenbrand and Rod Dixon in similar fashion around the last 400 metres.

Then the women’s 800 which Janeth Jepkosgei tried to win the only way she knows – leading in 26.6 and 55 seconds, before Caster Semenya looked like she must win – taking over on the final bend, only to see Mariya Savinova come past up the straight to win in 1:55.87.