Athletics · 2000 · Sydney, Australia
Nine Hundredths of a Second
Two of distance running's greatest rivals contest an Olympic 10,000m final that comes down to a final-metre lean, settled by the smallest margin in the event's Olympic history.
0.09 seconds
Winning margin
27:18.20
Winning time
2 (1996, 2000), both to Gebrselassie
Rivalry Olympic finals
Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat had already met in an Olympic 10,000m final once before, in Atlanta in 1996, where Gebrselassie won by a similarly slender margin. Four years later in Sydney, the pattern repeated itself in even more dramatic fashion.
Tergat made his move on the final backstretch, surging past the field and opening a real gap that looked, for a moment, like it might finally be enough. Gebrselassie clawed his way back over the final 100 metres, drawing level only in the last strides and dipping for the line to win by 0.09 seconds, 27:18.20 to 27:18.29, the closest finish in Olympic 10,000m history.
The rivalry produced two of the most replayed distance races of the era and never delivered a win for Tergat, who left Sydney with his second consecutive Olympic silver behind the same man. Gebrselassie went on to break the marathon world record twice in the following decade, while the Sydney final remains the standard reference for a 10,000m run to its absolute limit.
Watch the Moment
