Four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah will not be able to defend his 10000m Olympic title at the upcoming Tokyo Games after missing the qualifying standard of 27 minutes 28 seconds at the British Athletics Championships and Olympic trials in Manchester.
The distance double winner at both London 2012 and Rio 2016, Farah struggled through the last three-and-a-half kilometres of the race before crossing the line in 27:47.04, nearly 20 seconds outside the required mark.
"You go out there and give it all, and that's what you have. At one point it was quite windy and I tried to push and push and push. With nine laps to go I knew I was on my own," the official website of Olympics quoted Farah as saying.
"That's all you can do as a human being, you give it your all. I've had a wonderful career, I'm very luck to have had the long career I've had and I'm very grateful. That's all I had today. I've always said that if I can't compete with the best, I'm not just going to go to finish in a final. I'm going out there to compete, and tonight shows it's not good enough," he added.
In a race specially organised for the superstar, his last pacemaker dropped out with nine laps to go and the Briton some three seconds outside his target time.
Farah started to drop off the pace, going from around 2:43 per kilometre to 2:49, and with five laps remaining the champion was 10 seconds behind the target. He began his last lap needing to run it in 48 seconds, which always seemed like a tough ask, and so it proved as he came home outside the required time.
( With inputs from ANI )
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