Mo Farah Falls, Still Wins Gold in Olympic 10,000m

Mo Farah won his fourth consecutive 10,000m gold medal at a World Championship event Saturday night with his 27:05.17 win in Rio. It came with a bit more adversity than his first three as he fell to thr track at around the 4000m mark of the race when he was clipped from behind by his training partner Galen Rupp.

FloTrack captured the relevant screenshot of the contact.

A cute scene ensued as Rupp sort of veered to the right to almost double back to wait for Farah to get up. Within 50m, Farah and Rupp were back in the top 10 of the race, so little other than rhythm was lost in the ordeal.

Although the race got out relatively slow with a 13:53 first 5000, the pace gradually picked up as the race proceeded. Farah, as is his wont, responded to every move and was contend to just go along for the ride for as long as he could stand it. For his part, Rupp mostly stuck right with Farah, and I believe I even detected some coordinating gestures between the two. Either way, it was clear that they both wanted to run together.

Farah moved into the lead with 1000m to go, at which point it was only down to six men—Rupp, Farah, Tanui, Tola, Demelash, Cheptegei—making conditions certainly not optimal for Galen Rupp to get his second Olympic medal in the event.

Entering the final lap, Paul Tanui had emerged as the main challenger to Farah. Through the first 200m of that last lap, it was nervous time for the Brit as he looked to be lacking the gear that has won him three 10,000m world championships. He found it with about 150 to go and opened up a gap on Tanui.

To the latter’s credit, Tanui didn’t make Farah’s move an open-and-shut case, but nevertheless, Farah has won again and keeps the hopes of a double gold in the 5000m alive. Galen Rupp finished 5th and will have the marathon as his only chance at claiming a medal in Rio.

Look familiar: