Daily Mail

Mo’s brilliant but he needs to break world records to be a great like Seb, Sally and me

- DALEY THOMPSON DECATHLON LEGEND

ITHOUGHT Mo Farah’s achievemen­t in Moscow, winning 5,000m and 10,000m gold to add to his two Olympic titles, was brilliant.

He is now the best long-distance runner in the world and I think he’s got a range that very few people have ever been able to match, in terms of being competitiv­e at every distance from 1500m to the half marathon — and even moving up to the marathon next year.

Sebastian Coe has said he thinks Mo is now without doubt the greatest British athlete in history, but I would have to agree with Steve Cram: I think Mo has moved up even higher towards that category of all-time greats but whether he’s the greatest or not is still a question of interpreta­tion.

That makes for a great argument down the pub because people will always side with characters they liked, or athletes from their era who they loved to watch, which is fantastic for our sport. Personally, I would still put Coe right up there because he won so many titles and set nine outdoor world records.

Then there’s myself, Sally Gunnell and Jonathan Edwards — the only British athletes to have held Olympic, world, European and Commonweal­th titles at the same time and set world records, too. That’s the sort of utter dominance we’re talking about to be considered one of the greats.

Mo is getting up there now but is he a better distance runner than Edwards was a triple jumper?

Edwards was an unbelievab­le athlete but he only had one chance at glory in every major Championsh­ips, while his world record — 18.29m set at the 1995 World Championsh­ips in Gothenburg — still stands today.

Someone like Mo can double up, difficult though that is, and win two medals at every Championsh­ips. Usain Bolt, for example, has already equalled Carl Lewis by winning his eighth world title in Moscow and yet he’s done it in only four years. Mo has got to come back and do it again, at another Olympics or World Championsh­ips, to be considered one of the all-time greats.

By retaining his 5,000m title in Moscow he won his fifth global title but they’ve all come in just over two years.

You couldn’t do that at one stage because the World Championsh­ips did not start until 1983 and initially they were held every four years. It would have taken him a lot longer and been much harder for Mo to notch up those titles.

If he wants to be up there as one of the greatest distance runners in history, alongside the likes of Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselass­ie, then he has also got to break world records. Mo’s got to run times that means he is the fastest athlete there has ever been.

I think he can do it, maybe setting his sights on a world record in the marathon next year and then coming back to concentrat­e on the track again in 2015. At the moment it feels like there’s nothing Mo can’t do.

He’s completely turned around the perception of distance running. A couple of years ago the Europeans were frightened of the Africans.

But now Mo and his American training partner Galen Rupp are kicking butt. All the Kenyans and Ethiopians are scared of Great Britain now, while Rupp is proving white guys can compete over the longer distances, too. Mo now has the chance to become the greatest distance runner the world has ever seen and enhance his claim to be the greatest British athlete in history. How fantastic is that?

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