El Guerrouj ends wait for Olympic gold

Hicham El Guerrouj banished his demons as he finally won the Olympic 1,500metres gold medal in Athens last night.

In a neck-and-neck struggle down the home straight, El Guerrouj held off arch Kenyan rival Bernard Lagat by just 0.12 seconds.

The time of three minutes 34.18 seconds was irrelevant to the Moroccan, who finally realised a lifetime’s ambition after crushing disappointments in the last two Games.

El Guerrouj’s hopes on his début eight years ago were dashed when he fell at the bell and came home 12th.

Then the world record holder was surprisingly outsprinted by Noah Ngeny of Kenya in Sydney.

The 29-year-old carried not only those bad experiences onto the start line with him tonight, but also the fact that illness had seriously affected his build-up to Athens.

A chest problem saw his winning streak of 29 victories over 1,500m and the mile ended at the end of June in Rome’s Golden League meeting.

That prompted El Guerrouj to say he might miss the Olympics unless he could get back into gold-medal-winning shape.

Even though El Guerrouj was beaten by Lagat 18 days ago in Zurich, when the Kenyan ran the fastest time in the world this year of 3:27.40, so close was he to Lagat that confirmed he would be in Athens.

El Guerrouj hit the front with two laps of the race remaining.

Lagat was looking relaxed, however, and stayed with El Guerrouj, leading to a burn-up on the home straight.

With 20 metres remaining it was still anyone’s race, but then El Guerrouj drew on the last ounce of strength in his body and drew marginally ahead of Lagat to win a classic battle.

The first world record of the Games came in the pole vault when Yelena Isinbayeva raised her own mark by a centimetre.

Isinbayeva had failures at 4.70m and 4.75m, but she cleared 4.80m and 4.85m before moving to 4.91m for her last attempt.

With fellow Russian Svetlana Feofanova having exited the competition with a best height of 4.75m, the stage was set for Isinbayeva to complete her campaign with a new world best.

For the eighth time this year, the 22-year-old ace rose to the occasion, soaring over on her first attempt to bring the evening to a thrilling conclusion.