It’s easy to lose the spotlight to someone like Usain Bolt. But on Thursday night, a 23-year old Kenyan Maasai ensured that his name would resonate through the history of middle-distance running and be spoken of in educated quarters in the same breath as that of the more illustrious Bolt.
The story of David Rudisha’s rise from a soft-spoken Kenyan schoolboy disinterested in sport to perhaps the greatest middle distance runner in the world currently was completed in the hard racetracks of London’s Olympic Stadium.
Rudisha not only won gold in an event he has almost made his own, but he did so by crushing his own world record with an inspired run that will possibly be included amongst some of the most profound Olympic moments of all time. That is because, on Thursday, London was perhaps witness to the greatest 800-metre race ever run in recorded Olympic history.
Because it is not just that Rudisha set a record pace. It is that he absolutely had to, because behind him, every single runner seemingly ran the race of his life. Two runners set national records, four others set their personal bests and another ran a season best. And if that was not enough, every single man ran the fastest ever time for their placing in history. Rudisha’s metronomic brilliance though, was a tad too much for anyone else.
The race was so good, that it was barely believable. Rudisha himself thought so.
“I could hardly believe it,” he said at the press conference later.
Neither could those watching as the 800-metre that unfolded before their eyes became less a run and more a sprint. It seemed the athletes had put all reservations at the door and decided all and sundry to just go for it. Suffice to say it was thrilling.
Rudisha ran the 500 metres in 61, the 600 in a minute and fourteen seconds and with 200 to go, in his own words he ‘decided to push it.’
And push it he did, motoring onto world record pace. With this run, Rudisha now owns six of the event’s top eight times, and he said he was surprised he broke the world record after two rounds of qualifying. “I think I got a little bit tired,” he said. “I could feel it in my legs.”
Coming into London 2012, Rudisha was just about as close to a sure thing to a gold medal as any track and field athlete could get. Yet, the deed still has to be done and the 23-year completed it with aplomb, bringing full circle a family history that stretches back to the 1968 Olympics, where his father won silver in the relay. “I was thinking of my father at home watching this race. He was not able to come here and watch it. He is always part of me, he is the one who has made me come this far. It’s been a big inspiration in my career.
“He won silver in 1968 and I have been dreaming of bettering that by winning the gold medal. I saw in a magazine from the 1960s he wanted to break the world record but he couldn’t do it. I have fulfilled that ambition he couldn’t.”
In the past, world 800-metre record-holders have struggled to live up to their storied reputations at the Olympic Games. Sebastian Coe missed out on gold in both 1980 and 1984; Wilson Kipketer did the same some two decades later.
But in 2010 Rudisha broke the 13-year-old world 800-metre record twice in one week. Then, in 2011, he won his first global title at the World Athletics Championships in Daegu. In the Olympic Park in London on Thursday, he won the Olympic gold missing from his locker. On Thursday, the 23-year old Kenyan achieved sporting immortality.
-With The Daily Star input
