Distance running is often too large a blanket thrown over a group of Olympic events, but Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj is attempting to win a nearly unprecedented combo of golds in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters that would make him, indisputably, the world's greatest distance runner.
As track events, they might be lumped together as easily as the 100 and 200, but history shows that success has rarely been bridged over the two longer distances.
It's all the more daunting a task considering El Guerrouj has yet to win an Olympic gold, despite being a four-time world champ who has run seven of the eight fastest 1,500 times ever. The one-two challenge has been pulled off once in Olympic history, by Finland's Paavo Nurmi in 1924.
Only once in 19 Olympics since has an athlete even medaled in both events, but that is what El Guerrouj is seeking, less than a month before his 30th birthday, having picked up the 5,000 last year with impressive results. At last year's World Championships, the 5K novice finished second to Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge, by a sprinter's blink of .04 seconds. He is a man accustomed to agonizing finishes, none more painful than at the Olympics.
In 1996, he fell on the final lap of the Olympic 1,500, going from the lead to a last-place finish that left him in tears, hiding under a grandstand. Four years later, an even closer finish yielded another near-miss, as he was overtaken by Kenya's Noah Ngeny in the closing meters of the final stretch.
The 1,500 has been the event he has dominated everywhere but the Olympics, setting a world record at 3:26, and in the mile at 3:43.13. That is his legacy, but his storied career lacks the most tangible sign of global dominance: the Olympic gold. In Athens, he goes for not one, but two.
If the 1,500 is the comfortable shoe that fits him perfectly, the 5,000 is the newfound challenge whose novelty still hasn't worn off even under supremely difficult expectations.
"In the 5,000, I feel like a teenager who has just learned to drive," he told the Times of London.
NATIVE SON: In Sydney, Konstantinos Kenteris was one of four Greek men to earn golds, surprising the world by winning the 200 ahead of Trinidad and Tobago's Ato Bolden. His victory came with a large asterisk, since American sprinters Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene weren't running due to injuries suffered in the U.S. Trials.
Kenteris has had four years to prepare himself for the challenge of defending his gold in his native country, with a nation of fans cheering him on. His win in Sydney marked the first time a non-American had won since the 1980 U.S. boycott, but this year's field will include a trio of U.S. sprinters in Shawn Crawford, Justin Gatlin and Bernard Williams. No sprinter in Olympic history has repeated as gold medalist, and Kenteris will compete in the 200, though he chose not to run the event at the Greek Trials, where he won the 100.
He'll have good incentive to run, and run well, in Athens - in addition to the adoration of millions of his countrymen, another gold could be lucrative in more easily appreciated ways. His gold in 2000 earned him a bonus of 200,000 Euros, or just under a quarter-million dollars, from the Greek government.
NO MAN IS ...: If Athens is a time to appreciate Olympic history, Kim Collins is one athlete who could make some. The 28-year-old sprinter seeks to be the first from the tiny Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis to win an Olympic medal.
Collins, who was in the final heat in the 100 in Sydney, is among the favorites to medal in Athens, having won the 100 in last year's World Championships. He has said there are no track facilities on island, which has a population of about 40,000. It's better, then, that he has trained in Fort Worth, Texas, with the hope of bringing home a medal.
