Mo Farah wins the 10,000m at the European Championships, but how good is he?
Mo Farah has just won the 10,000m at the European Championships in a time of 28 minutes and eight seconds. But just how good is he?
Farah is the reigning Olympic and World champion and his medal cabinet must make for impressive viewing.
He has 12 gold medals at the Olympic, World and European Championships, not to mention a generous collection of silver and bronze medals too (see table). So is he the fastest man over 10,000m?
Far from it. But he is very good at winning.
Farah's best time over 10 kilometres is 26.46 which he managed in Eugene (US) back in 2011.
That time, while ludicrously fast compared to that of your common or garden road runner, is still 38 seconds slower than the undisputed king of the distance, Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele, who tops the board with an improbable 26.08.
In fact, on the list of the fastest men over 10k, Farah comes in at number 12:
The table is just the fastest men not the fastest times: it doesn't take in to account the fact that men in the top 11 places may have run faster than Farah more than once.
If we look at the progression of the 10k world record (track) we can see that Farah would have to nip back 20 years to be world record holder.
As previously mentioned however, Farah is a great champion because he is very good at arguably the best thing a runner can be great at: running fast enough to win.