Tokyo, Aug 2: Sifan Hassan pointed to her left shoulder. “I have pain here,” she said.
Then, her right leg. “Pain here.”
Then, she dropped her hands to her sides in exhaustion, too tired to explain it anymore. “Pain there.”
Winning the Olympics really can hurt sometimes. But it’s hard to keep the world’s busiest speed demon down for long.
Hassan scored two remarkable victories on the Olympic track Monday. Her gold-medal run in the women’s 5,000 metres came a mere 11 hours after she picked herself up from a scary fall on the final lap of her 1,500-metre heat to not only finish that race — but win it, as well.
Those two wins kept Hassan, the Ethiopian-born 28-year-old who now competes for the Netherlands, very much in the mix for not one, not two, but three medals — in the 1,500, the 5,000 and the 10,000.
It’s a never-before-attempted Olympic journey that will require eight races over six days. It’s a journey most thought would be impossible even before the sort of fall that can take even the heartiest of runners off the track. The 1,500-metre heat should have been a no-fuss warmup for Hassan’s main event later in the day. Running from the back, as is her preference, she was gearing up to make her move as the phalanx of 15 runners approached the start of the final lap.
But Kenya’s Edinah Jebitok stumbled and tumbled to the ground just in front of her. Hassan tried to save things by hurdling over her fallen opponent, but instead tripped and did half a barrel roll.
Most runners might have called it a day, and Hassan said the thought crossed her mind for a split second. She could have filed a protest and potentially been moved along to the next round because the spill really wasn’t her fault.
And so, in the span of two seconds, she was up again. What came next was one of the most remarkable 60-second laps in racing, as Hassan moved from the back of the pack, picking off runner after runner. All she needed to advance was a top-six finish. She ended up taking first.
While social media blew up with tales of Hassan’s recovery, the track and field world waited through lunch and dinner to see what, if anything, she could possibly have left in the tank when she returned for her first gold-medal race.
Turned out to be plenty. Lingering in the back, then the middle of the pack for the first 11 laps on a track still soaked by an earlier rainstorm, she kicked things in with about 250 metres left. She won the race going away, in 14 minutes, 36.79 seconds — a pedestrian time for her, but amazing considering the circumstances.
Hassan was 1.57 seconds ahead of Obiri, and Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay who took bronze. (AP)
