• Sifan Hassan keeps quest for three distance golds alive.
TOKYO >> At the end of a day that began in near disaster and ended with her being crowned Olympic 5,000-meter champion, Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands walked along the edge of the Olympic Stadium just past the finish line late Monday night, scanning the nearly empty venue for a familiar face to connect with.
Finally someone threw her a large Dutch flag. Hassan wrapped it around herself, walked a few steps and then dropped to her knees, leaned forward, her face almost touching the track and she pulled the flag over her head, completely covering herself, seeking refuge from a day full of emotions she could no longer bear.
“It feels like a nightmare, and I can’t believe it, maybe tomorrow I will,” she later said. “Everything was just drama.”
Hassan kept alive her bid to pull off an unprecedented sweep of the Olympic 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 titles in Tokyo on Monday, completing the first step by blowing away the field in the 5,000 over the final 300 meters.
But her historic quest was nearly derailed 12 hours earlier in her 1,500 first-round heat. In an incident hauntingly similar to the collision that knocked Jim Ryun, the world record-holder in the 1,500 and mile, out of the 1972 Olympic 1,500 heats, Hassan, 28, got entangled with Edina Jebitok with just 380 meters remaining in the race, both runners crashing to the track.
By the time Hassan was back on her feet, the lead pack had already put 25 meters on her.
“Believe me, it was horrible, but sometimes I think bad things happen for good,” she said. “When I fell down I said to myself, ‘OK life doesn’t always go the way that you want.’ After that I felt like somebody who drank 20 cups of coffee. I couldn’t calm myself down.”
It is a measure of Hassan’s talent that she not only caught the pack but won the heat in 4-minutes, 5.17 seconds, advancing to Wednesday’s semifinals.
“In the 1500m I couldn’t believe I made it,” she said. “I was saying to myself ‘How did this happen?’ and ‘How did I finish the race, especially at the final 100 meters?.’”
But the crash and the exertion required to secure a qualifying spot in the 1,500 semis took a toll on Hassan.
“I was tired and I had pains all over,” she said. “I said maybe the 5000 wasn’t meant to be. I am not going to win the race, it is not my day.”