Summary
Through the season 20 athletes ran sub 27 minutes, but all of these occurred in just three races, two were used as the Olympic Trials for Ethiopia and Kenya; the third was The TEN, a set up evening race that qualified the eventual American team and individuals from four other countries. World record holder Joshua Cheptegei and several other likely contenders had never attempted the distance during the season. With no qualifying round, they were unknown commodities. [2]
25 athletes started 25 laps around the stadium. After the first few laps all three Ethiopian runners, defending champion Selemon Barega, Yomif Kejelcha and Berihu Aregawi congealed to the front of the large pack. It was clear they intended to control the race from the front, switching position and clearly communicating. Immediately behind them Grant Fisher, Benard Kibet and Mohammed Ahmed positioned themselves to watch the proceedings, but with the games being played at the front of the pack, very few athletes were falling off the back. After 6000 metres, Kejelcha expanded his turn to lead into a 5m gap on his teammates. Seeing the change, Ahmed and Kibet rushed to fill the gap. At that same moment, Fisher caught the heel of a slowing Aregawi, stepping on the curb and nearly falling. With three laps to go, Aregawi and Kejelcha went to the front, looking to set up a wall, but there were 10 athletes bunched up behind. After hovering toward the back of the pack throughout the race, Cheptegei moved up to the front. With 600 to go, Cheptegei ran around the wall, trading elbows with Kejelcha and into the lead. Taking a lesson from Mo Farah, he did not intend to relinquish that lead. The chase was on behind him. Ahmed was the first to get around, followed by Kibet and Fisher. Coming onto the home stretch, Cheptegei had a 3-metre lead on Ahmed. Fisher got around Kibet and everybody sprinted to the finish. Fisher slowly gained and passed Ahmed, clear for silver. But after falling back to 7th place in the re-shuffling, Aregawi sprinted around the outside to roar past everyone but Cheptegei to steal the silver from Fisher by 2 hundredths of a second. [3]
Cheptegei's winning time took 18 seconds off the Olympic record, but the first 13 places all beat the old record because the Ethiopians kept the pace serious from the beginning in far contrast to the usual, slow strategic races in Championship finals. Thierry Ndikumwenayo, Adriaan Wildschutt and Jimmy Gressier set new national records for Spain, South Africa and France respectively.
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