"Bekele Dominant as Ever"!

The day-long rain that pelted the Don Valley stadium in Sheffield made conditions miserable for athletes and spectators alike. Indeed, it was more like cross country weather than a summer track meeting, which probably explains why the performance of the night belonged to Ethiopia’s king of the country, Kenenisa Bekele.

The five-times double world cross country champion was back to his peerless best in the men’s 3000m, a race billed as a re-match with Australia’s Craig Mottram, the man who beat him in a sprint finish at last year’s IAAF World Cup. Bekele gave Mottram little chance to repeat that triumph here as he simply destroyed the Australian over the last kilometre to win by a huge margin.

After a quick first kilomere, paced by Kenya’s Charles Bett in 2:29.57, and second 1000m of 2:33.15, Bekele moved to the front and kicked away from his Australian shadow, speeding through a 58-second lap that turned a three-metre advantage into an unassailable 30m lead. He stopped the clock at 7:26.69, a stadium record by almost 13 seconds. More significantly it erased yet another of Haile Gebrselassie’s marks from the record books, the UK all-comers’ record of 7:29.69, it is the fastest time in the world this year by nearly six and a half seconds, and it makes Bekele the seventh quickest 3000m runner of all-time. Not bad considering the curtain of chilling water he had to plough through.

Not surprisingly, Bekele was the happiest man in the stadium. “That was a fantastic race,” he said. “The weather makes it very difficult to run well, but today is very special. I have been training very hard and it now shows that I am at my best.”

A bedraggled Mottram held on to finish second in 7:35.00, but afterwards the Australian’s mood was as grey as the heavy South Yorkshire skies. “That was not the Craig Mottram you usually see,” he said. “I am clearly better than that.” No doubt he is, although his time was still the fifth best in the world this year, while Americans Chris Solinsky and Dathan Ritzenhein, in third and fourth, both set PBs – 7:36.90 and 7:39.03 respectively. Not that either were within spitting distance of Bekele. Indeed, the Ethiopian was one of the few athletes with reason to feel genuinely pleased with his performance on a night when many of the most-publicised clashes turned into damp squibs.