Mo Farah wins his final race in dramatic finish while CJ Ujah beats drug cheat Justin Gatlin in 100m
British distance star admitted he had to produce a Colin Jackson-style dip to bring his track career to a close in style
MO FARAH admitted he had to produce a Colin Jackson-style dip finish to secure victory and bring his track career to a close in style.
The British distance star clocked 13:06.05 to win the 5,000metres - and £39,000 - at the Weltklasse Diamond League meeting in Zurich tonight as his arch-rival Muktar Edris stumbled in the final metres.
Farah had cut a sad figure earlier this month when he was curled up and sobbing on the track at the Olympic Stadium after the Ethiopian beat him to World Championship 5,000m gold.
It was the first time he had lost a global title since his 2011 defeat in the 10,000m in Daegu.
Sandwiched between were 11 global titles in a row - four Olympic golds and six World crowns, including 10,000m gold at London 2017.
Edris was among the rivals aiming to spoil the farewell party when the 34 year-old lined up beside him on the same track where he won two European titles in 2014 and first set a British 5,000m record in 2010.
Appropriately, given the 34-year-old now has father time against him, Farah was handed a Swiss watch by the organisers of the meeting before he raced his last 12.5 laps.
The Letzigrund Stadium is the arena where athletics legends including Seb Coe - watching on in the stands - and Haile Gebrselassie famously broke world records.
But after London he was determined to exact revenge on the Ethiopian and dipped at the end as Edris could only finish third in 13:06.09, stumbling and crashing into world bronze medallist Paul Chelimo who was second.
Only four hundredths of a second separated the trio.
Farah, who will now step up to the marathon event and has insisted he has no plans to pull on a British vest again even over the 26.2 mile event at the next World Championships in Doha in 2019, admitted: "With 200m to go, I was hurting but then at the end, I pulled out a Colin Jackson dive.
"Since London I’ve been resting up, watching Edris, seeing his tactics. Studying that. Working it out. My game plan was to sit on him and make him do a lot of the work. But it came into the last lap and I told myself ‘do not give anyone an inch’' At that point I had to tell myself I could hold this.
"I didn’t know he’d stumbled. I told myself ‘to the line, to the line’. It’s my twin daughters' (fifth) birthday today so to come away with that result and end my career with a win, you can’t get any better than that."
BRITISH sprinter CJ Ujah won the 100m in 9.97secs - beating American drug cheat Justin Gatlin who snatched the world title from Usain Bolt in London two weeks ago.
Ujah, who picked up £39,000 for winning the Diamond League final at the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich, didn't even make the showdown at the World Championships but came back to grab 4x100m gold with the British boys days later.
And he admitted: "It's probably the best individual win of my career. I'm the Diamond League champion and it feels amazing. It’s just a shame I didn’t get it done at the World Championships as I was pretty upset not to make the final."
Gatlin could only clock 10.04secs with Ujah's British relay team-mate Adam Gemili eighth in 10.13secs.