I’M SO GLAD IT’S HAPPY TEARS THIS TIME
MUIR PUTS PAST AGONY BEHIND HER TO RACE TO SUPERB SILVER
SHE got there in the end. Bravely, brilliantly and in a time never before run by a British woman, she got there in the end. Laura Muir, Olympic silver medallist.
It wasn’t gold, but that was never likely. Not with the greatest 1500m runner who ever lived in the field. But while Faith Kipyegon kept the title, Muir kept the faith.
She never stopped believing a first global outdoor medal would come, even after all those disappointments — fifth, seventh, fourth, sixth, fifth, head always bobbing, legs always carrying her to the front, lungs always pulling her back just as the places were being decided. It was becoming her story; the great athlete who might never stand with the greats.
But how marvellously that all changed in Tokyo, where Muir exorcised a ghost of Rio 2016 and simultaneously killed off a demon of a runner in Sifan Hassan.
First, let’s go back to the horrors of Brazil to understand the beauty of Japan. That’s where Muir made the gutsiest of bad calls and abandoned a bronze that was almost nailed on, in favour of hunting the gold. She broke with the two leaders that night and attacked with everything she had, but she couldn’t live with them and eventually woke up in seventh.
Now, let’s return to Tokyo. To her decision from the first lap to stick with Kipyegon and Hassan, the fastest and second fastest 1500m runners in the world this year and last year, and the year before that. It seemed far too risky to keep such quick company with women who have a couple of seconds on her. Safer to ride the pack and kick them at the death.
But she stuck in there at the front. And so we waited — her on the track, us watching. We waited to see when the inevitable fall back would come; she waited for a sign, the sort you don’t easily detect on television, but which prick the instincts of the elite.
The first of those, the implosion, simply never happened which meant that bronze seemed safe by the time they were 100m into the final lap. Good for her. But not good enough it would seem. And that brings us to the sign, which came as they entered the final 200m of the race.
Kipyegon, in that Kenyan vest, had just pulled away from Hassan and was kicking for her second gold medal, but Muir then noticed something in the Dutchwoman in second place, a few metres ahead.
‘I saw that she started rocking a wee bit,’ Muir later told us. In other words, Hassan, four days after winning the 5,000m and on her fifth race of a 1500m-5k-10k treble attempt, was gassed. So Muir (below) attacked, passing her on the bend and then holding on for dear life as she drowned in lactic acid.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared for a few seconds,’ she said.
But nothing came past. No same sinking feeling. After three minutes and 54.50 seconds — 1.39sec behind Kipyegon — she had her medal, a silver one, and she had broken her own British record, too.
Almost two hours later, much of which she spent crying, Muir was still clinging to that disc.
‘I’ve been missing out on global finals since 2015, coming fourth, fifth twice, sixth and seventh,’ she explained. ‘And then for my first global medal to not only be an Olympic one, but a silver against that calibre of that field, I just couldn’t be happier.
‘Whether I got a medal or not, it was always going to end in tears, but I’m just so happy it is happy tears this time. There have been a lot of sad tears over the past few years. It’s great that I have finally got this.’
With that, Muir, 28, was asked how she might celebrate.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘All my plans finished about an hour ago so I’ve no idea what I’m going to do. I’m really excited that we get flown home so quickly because I just want to see my family.
‘I’ve missed them a lot the past few years being away on camps. I’ll see them and I’ll sleep. This is my reward.’ She looked at the medal at that point, and while all medals at an Olympics are special, no sport
carries deeper fields from more outposts of the world than athletics. Within athletics, fewer disciplines are so hard contested as the 1500m. All medals count, some are tougher to win. ‘I’ve worked so hard for so long,’ she added. ‘It’s just such a huge relief.’ For a moment, it seemed she might cry those happy tears again.
JOY from disappointment. Disappointment from joy. They can live awfully close together at an Olympics and that journey has a habit of passing very quickly indeed in sprint relays.
And so to a pair of British 4x100m teams who took opposing trips through the emotional spectrum last night, with relief for one and a sense of the bittersweet for the other 20 minutes later.
In terms of the women’s team, there was a flirtation with a disqualification for an iffy changeover and eventually the joy of a bronze medal, which will stand as a happier ending of sorts for Dina AsherSmith after the misery of her tale last weekend. They felt it could have been more, and perhaps it could have been, but they were more than happy to sign for it.
The men? That was a harder one. A better colour, but a bigger knot in the stomach. They had the gold medal in their hands and then suddenly and brutally they found themselves wearing silver. They were close. Awfully close. And all in a race they were not expected to win, but which they transformed through three nearly perfect legs.
It started with a burst from the blocks by CJ Ujah and progressed with a strong redemption run from Zharnel Hughes, who had falsestarted his way out of the men’s individual 100m. From there the baton reached Richard Kilty who, via the leg of his life, gave Britain a lead over Italy and Canada going into the last changeover.
That was the big one. He set Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake loose on the final straight, with a lead over the 200m gold medallist Andre De Grasse and the Italian Filippo Tortu. For 80m he held them off, but at 90 he started to wobble. His form went, he twisted rather than dipped, and by the line he had beaten De Grasse but was the tiniest of fractions behind Tortu.
The margin? One-hundredth of a second, with Britain clocking 37.51sec to Italy’s 37.50, which completed a shock Olympic double for the individual 100m champion Marcell Jacobs.
Mitchell-Blake looked crestfallen and sounded it, too, saying: ‘The gold was in touching distance. There was that moment of anguish and frustration, knowing we were one-hundredth of a second away from an Olympic gold in one of the most bizarre years in the history of mankind, never mind sporting history. I dare you to get your phone out and try to start and stop your phone in one hundredth of a second. That is how close we were.’
From there, some levity. ‘You can’t be surprised,’ Mitchell-Blake added. ‘Italy won Eurovision, they won the Euros, men’s 100m and now the men’s 4x100m.’
Kilty chipped in: ‘Forget the Roman Empire, Nero, all that nonsense. This is as big as it gets for them. They better soak it in because they have conquered the world this year. We’re better than them, we’ll beat them next year.’
It was a surprise that Britain should do so well baton in hand, having lost relay guru Stephen Maguire last year. No slump has been forthcoming — the result a boost to an athletics team belatedly finding pace at these Games.
The women’s four of Asha Philip, Imani-Lara Lansiquot, AsherSmith and Daryll Neita skirted with calamity when Lansiquot came perilously close to leaving her zone before collecting from Philip. They were fifth going into the final exchange when Neita overhauled Switzerland and Germany to take a podium place behind champions Jamaica and the US in silver.
For Asher-Smith, there was a degree of comfort after her individual campaign was wrecked by a lack of conditioning in the wake of a hamstring injury.
‘I’ve got mixed emotions,’ she said. ‘The competitive me is like: “Aagh, I could have done this and we could have pushed for a different colour medal”. But at the same time, on a personal journey I was on crutches six weeks ago and there was a less than 10 per cent chance I was going to be here.
‘I worked incredibly hard and to come away with a medal here is something I could not even have contemplated six weeks ago.’