PAIN THRILLER
Muir puts her body through bruising battle for bronze
LAURA MUIR slumped to the track and gasped for breath when she reached the line after one of her greatest races.
She lay on her back, eyes closed, her body throbbing in response to the trauma she had put it through.
“Everything hurt,” said Muir as a bronze, Britain’s first medal of these World Championships in the States, was handed to her instantly.
“My legs were on fire, I felt like I couldn’t lift them, I was running in treacle. Everything was burning.”
The fearless Scot had vowed she was ready for the mother of all scraps in the 1500 metres final.
As the sun set on the fourth day of these champs, it was clear she had buried herself for the cause. The result was Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon winning a second world title ahead of Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay, with 29-year-old Muir third in three minutes 55.28 seconds. But that does scant justice to the scale of performance put in by the trio, who ran away from the field at the start and crossed the line six seconds clear. Muir had been on crutches as recently as February, lost six weeks of training and was wondering if adding a medal to her Olympic silver in Tokyo was a forlorn hope.
She said: “It was the most significant injury I’d ever had – two months unable to run, two weeks on crutches.”
Yet here she was, mixing it with two giants of the sport, just as she had so memorably in Japan almost a year ago.
She added: “I knew after the first couple of 100 metres it was going to be fast. “But I thought looking at the clock wouldn’t do me any favours, so I raced it and stayed in contention as long as possible.”
A notable breeze had been factored into her game plan and she cleverly drafted behind the pacesetters, preserving energy for the lungbusting finale.
They lapped in 58.82 seconds and reached the halfway point in 2:03.22. Muir, watched for the first time at a global championship by mum and dad, Alison and Crawford, said: “There was a lot of lactic and I was so tired. But if you are going to run as hard as you ever have, this is the time to do it.”
So she dug deeper and clung on for dear life until the line finally came into view and her ordeal was over.
“This time last year I hadn’t won an outdoor global medal,” she said.
“Now I’ve got two against two of the best 1500m runners last year and two of the best this year. “I started my career wanting to run all six champs – I’ve done that. Then make the final of all six – I’ve done that. “Now I want to win a medal at all six and it’s five down, one to go.
“One at the Commonwealth Games would complete the set.”
As she spoke, Kipyegon revealed she will not compete in Birmingham next month.
It truly was Muir’s day.