Stories of the Olympic Games: 1500 Metres Faster, Higher, Stronger

And Wells has done it!

Isn't she marvellous?

I cannot believe that Thorpe's done that!

A fantastic run by Coe. He's done it, he's got the gold.

The Los Angeles Olympics, 1984.

Three British runners prepare to contest the 1500 metres,

the blue riband event of any Olympics.

Reigning Olympic champion Sebastian Coe will attempt to become

the first man in history to defend his title,

against world record-holder Steve Ovett and world champion Steve Cram.

What a trio to put out in a 1500 metre final.

We were the dominant force in track and field.

There wasn't a middle distance title that did not reside in this country.

The Olympic 1500 metres final

and straight away Coe goes into the lead.

To win, Coe needs to be the complete athlete, tactically clever

with the stamina of a marathon runner

and the explosive speed of a sprinter.

With a lap to go, the race takes a dramatic turn.

And Steve Ovett's dropped out. The world record-holder out.

Now Coe and Cram race for gold.

He's the Olympic champion. Can he do it again?

This would be the pinnacle of British Olympic history,

but since the modern Games began,

the 1500 metres has been a global story.

From unexpected corners of the world, this race has attracted

the most creative, innovative and exceptional athletes.

From Finland came a runner who devised the first systematic training regime.

He was the first to create this training ethos,

which then became the building blocks

for a lot of us then into the '60s and the '70s and the '80s.

From Australia and New Zealand appeared radical new ideas

that would push human endurance to the limit.

Pain's good for you. Pain is a cleanser.

Pain is something which helps you grow.

And from Africa, the breakthrough of preparing at high altitude

led to generations of Olympic superstars emerging

with a will to win.

TRANSLATION: Losing in life - it shouldn't exist in your dictionary.

The word "lose", for me, doesn't exist.

As Sebastian Coe sprinted to the finish line in Los Angeles,

he was cementing his place in this unique Olympic tradition -

the 1500 metres, the ultimate race.

The first great champion of the Olympic 1500 metres

emerged from a remote and unlikely corner of the world in the 1920s.

Paavo Nurmi came from Turku in Finland.

If he'd been running 30 years later,

he would have been, still, the best in the world.

He was that good.

It was what Nurmi did that set the foundations

for a lot of great distance running afterwards.

In an era of amateurs,

Nurmi was the first to bring a level of professionalism to running.

Nurmi arrived at the Paris Olympics in 1924

ready to contest the 1500 metres.

Three and three-quarter laps of the track, the metric mile

had been a part of the modern Games since their inception

in Athens in 1896.

In the Olympic stadium, Nurmi began the 1500 metres

at a blistering pace, completing the first lap in 58 seconds.

It was a tactic designed to kill off the opposition.

Nurmi won comfortably and set a new Olympic record.

Not content with this victory alone,

he would return to the track only two hours later

to compete in the 5000 metres.

Several people warned him.

They said, "You shouldn't compete in two events at the same time,"

but he did it.

Incredibly, Nurmi won the 5000 metres

and again set a new Olympic record.

But that wasn't the end of Nurmi's achievement.

He went on to win three more races -

the cross country, the 3000 metres and the cross country team event.

Five gold medals - an Olympic track record that still stands today.

TRANSLATION: Paavo Nurmi was totally unbeatable in these events.

The other runners barely made it to the finish,

some of them staggered and fell at the finishing line.

Paavo just said, "They trained poorly."

And it was Nurmi's training in the Finnish countryside that

held the key to his success.

He took his training to a different level.

He was certainly training harder, by a distance, than anybody else,

and he really paved the way,

in terms of just the quantity of what he did,

for the athletes that subsequently came through.

Nurmi followed a regime which became known as interval training,

where he would alternate between running at a fast and then at a steady pace.

He also realised that in races, sheer endurance was not enough,

so he systematically trained for speed as well.

Nurmi carried a stopwatch while he trained,

so he could time the different speeds which he ran.

He always had a stopwatch in his hand.

The stopwatch and Nurmi were an inseparable pair.

Nurmi even brought his stopwatch into competitions.

In his record-breaking 1500 metres victory,

he can be seen with the watch in his right hand.

Nurmi was the star of a golden generation of Finnish runners.

At the Paris Olympics,

they won every event from the 1500 metres to the marathon,

earning them the nickname 'The Flying Finns'.

Running had become popular in Finland after the country gained independence from Russia in 1917,

and a new sense of national identity was forged through the success of Finnish athletes.

TRANSLATION: A sort of cult of the runner evolved.

It was considered that Finns had what it took

to become the best runners of all.

This myth of the runner was linked to an older ideal

of the Finnish national character, as humble, hardworking, God-fearing,

and prepared to sacrifice everything for the county.

Paavo Nurmi was believed to be the embodiment of this unique Finnish ideal,

known as 'sisu', literally meaning guts.

Courage against the odds.

Finns consider sisu to be something that no other nation has,

something that has enabled Finns to resolve difficult situations,

whether in war or sport.

Sisu is willpower,

the ability to make almost superhuman efforts

on the spur of the moment.

And this could be seen in Paavo Nurmi.

He was like Mr Sisu.

Men who have sisu don't generally smile without good reason

and Paavo Nurmi was a very expressionless runner.

But Paavo Nurmi's Olympic story would end prematurely.

In 1932, on the eve of the Los Angeles Olympics,

Nurmi was caught receiving money for running in competitions in America,

breaking the amateur rules of the time.

He was banned from competing in the Games for life.

With the ban, Nurmi's Olympic dream was over.

But, in 1952, when the Games were held in Finland,

he raced into the Helsinki stadium

at the age of 55 to light the Olympic torch.

It was a symbol for Finland

because he was the big running star in the first years

of the country's independence,

and it was natural for him to light the Olympic torch.

Paavo Nurmi won a record nine gold medals

and became the first great champion of the Olympic 1500 metres

by dedicating himself to a solitary and systematic training regime.

But with his retirement,

Finland would no longer dominate the Games.

Eight years after Nurmi departed the arena,

a young runner from Australia arrived at the 1960 Rome Olympics

armed with a new strategy to win the 1500 metres.

Herb Elliot had only the year before smashed the 1500 metres world record

and now had his eyes on his first Olympic gold.

It was absolutely wild.

There was a wonderful atmosphere of excitement around the place, yeah,

which really sharpened the nerves up a bit.

But unlike Nurmi who trained alone,

Herb Elliot was coached by an eccentric and brilliant trainer.

Percy Cerutty had a special plan for winning Olympic gold.

I could go on for an hour, telling you stories about Percy,

his volatility, his crazy sense of humour, his eccentricities

and all that sort of stuff.

He wasn't a typical coach at all.

Percy Cerutty was born in 1895

and he got a nervous breakdown in 1937.

He made his way back to life by walking,

eating simple raw food, training, running,

lifting weights and he tried to qualify for the Olympic in 1948,

but he was too old - he was 53 years old - so he wanted to train athletes.

It was three years before the Rome Olympics that Elliot first met

the unorthodox coach who convinced him to follow his training regime.

He had just a pair of white shorts on and he started talking about

being able to fly, and he flapped his arms up and down.

If he'd taken off, I would have been very impressed

but he stayed on the ground like the rest of us,

So I thought he was a bit crazy, but he stirred me, he inspired me,

he challenged me and, from that moment on, really my career was set.

Just minutes before the Rome final, Cerutty gave a last-minute instruction to Elliot.

He said, "Now, when you get into the back straight, I'll be in the crowd

"and I'll have the Australian Olympic towel,

"and I'll be waving it like this for two things.

"One, if somebody's hot on your hammer and you've got to really watch out,

"or two, you got a chance of breaking the world record."

I was in a blurred state of mind and I only half-listened

to what he was saying.

At the instant the gun went, this light blue singlet,

I had no idea who he was or even what country he was from,

shot out like a frightened rabbit. In fact, for a moment,

I thought maybe the starter's gun had shot him in the arse or something like that!

He set the pace for maybe the first lap and a half,

so I just sat in, and as I usually did,

got a position about third or fourth.

We got to the point where I was ready to make my move

in the strategy that my coach and I had planned.

You'd expect some sort of voice to come up inside you at that stage, saying,

"This is what you've been waiting for, this is the moment you've been training for.

"This is the time you're going to show these guys what you're made of."

"And this little voice came up into my head and didn't say that at all."

It said, "Herb, you're buggered!"

It was a crunch moment, but Elliot's mind became flooded with images

of Cerrutty's training camp on the beach at Portsea in Australia.

You'd really need a poet to describe Portsea.

I mean, it's a very beautiful part of the world,

with limestone cliffs, the Southern Ocean, white sand beaches.

Percy believed you could absorb the beauty and the strength of nature

into your system to help you with your running.

It wasn't just the environment that Cerutty believed was important.

He was the first coach to put his athlete on

a strict diet of natural foods.

In those days in Australia, we had meat and three veg.

That's what was put on the plate every night.

Percy was a great believer in the life principle.

He said, "You have to eat food that still retains the life principle,

"Don't eat processed food, things like muesli, bran

"and all that sort of stuff which we were used to being fed to chickens,

It was so unique in Australia in those days for people to eat this stuff.

Fuelled by daily raw foods,

Elliot trained barefoot, sprinting up steep sand dunes at Portsea.

The whole concept of training was not get your heart rate up,

or get your lungs operating more efficiently,

or get your muscles finely tuned.

The whole basis for your training was mental toughness,

being outside your comfort zone,

and pushing yourself to your absolute limit.

It was an arduous program that Cerutty designed

to break the pain barrier and develop a mental toughness

which Elliot would need to win Olympic gold.

Pain's good for you. Pain is a cleanser.

Pain is something which helps you grow,

so there was all this encouragement

to really train exceptionally intensively.

The intensity meant that you were a pretty formidable competitor

when you got onto the track cos you trained that way.

In Rome, with 500 metres to go,

Elliot now drew on all the mental toughness his training had developed

to power himself into the lead.

I was full of fear. At that stage of the game, your cards are on the table.

Somebody's going to come up on you, you've got a real battle on your hands.

As Elliot entered the final 100 metres,

he caught a glimpse of Cerutty waving the Australian towel.

just as he said he would.

I thought, "Oh, my God, what is that supposed to mean?"

I couldn't quite remember what the reason was

and I figured out that whatever it was, I had to run faster.

Into the home straight, Elliott increasing speed,

almost arrogantly disregarding the rest of the field.

Elliot broke his own world record.

He also finished an astonishing 18 metres ahead of the rest of the runners.

Got there first, won the gold medal, and broke the world record.

And I do remember at the moment of striking the line,

it was not one of elation or one of joy,

it was just sheer bloody relief that the whole thing was over.

Meanwhile, Percy Cerutty, who had leapt on to the track as Elliot

crossed the line, had been arrested by the Italian police,

unaware that he was the coach who had masterminded this world record-breaking victory.

Elliot's outstanding performance was the only time

that a new world record would be set in the Olympic 1500 metres.

After Rome, runners focused on winning Olympic gold, rather than setting new records.

Back in Australia,

Elliot was celebrated as a national hero.

Our population in Australia in those days was 11 million,

or something like that.

You know that a hell of a lot of those people,

they're sharing the moment with you.

It's a terrific feeling of huge family all enjoying this moment that you've created.

Herb Elliot retired after this victory.

But he and Cerutty weren't the only duo from the southern hemisphere

who believed in the importance of a coaching strategy.

Across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand,

their exploits were watched by a coach, Arthur Lydiard,

and a runner, Peter Snell,

who were poised to employ their own radical tactics to win Olympic gold.

Lydiard was the first person that ever told me,

"Peter, you could be a great runner.

"You could be even a champion, you could be an Olympian"

That's music to a high-achiever's ears, to hear someone say that.

Most runners of this era continued to follow the interval training

favoured by Paavo Nurmi.

Lydiard, a former marathon runner, seen here,

believed completing long distances at an even pace was better preparation.

He had Snell run over 20 miles a day.

No middle distance runner had ever done this before.

Lydiard came along and said, "Well, we need endurance.

He said, "If you can get to the stage of being able to run my 22-mile course hard,

"and then come back and do the same thing the next day,

"then you'll be right for anything.

And it does get to that.

You can actually run that 22 hard and feel great afterwards.

But Lydiard's theory went against all the accepted medical advice

of the time and put him at odds with the athletics authorities

in New Zealand, who feared runners like Snell would become burnt out.

It just didn't seem to make sense to other coaches.

Running at a slow pace for long distances

has nothing to do with running for 1500 metres.

Like Cerutty, Arthur Lydiard believed in using the natural landscape.

The steep hills leading up to the Waitakere mountains that

surrounded Snell's hometown of Auckland

were perfect for testing and building his endurance.

Running about an hour a day on grassy surfaces

until I was conditioned enough to be able to handle longer runs.

The first 10 miles, things are going along quite nicely

and then the work up the hill starts to get to you and that's good.

You look to your right and you see the Tasman Sea,

and you look over to the left and it's the Pacific Ocean.

It's a great feeling.

Under the direction of Lydiard, Snell's training

began to strengthen his heart and lower his resting pulse rate.

This put him in peak condition.

The heart is getting bigger and it's able to push more out with each beat.

The average person - it's about 70 beats a minute,

and so mine eventually got down to about 36.

But, also, as one starts exercising,

there's a long way to go from 36 up to one's maximal heart rate

which is, for a young person, about 200 beats a minute.

This meant Snell would have greater endurance.

He could run faster for longer.

Going into the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo,

Snell felt his endurance was so high,

that he would attempt to win gold in both the 800 and 1500 metres.

My problem was, would I tire myself in the 800

and not have enough left for the 1500?

Snell won the 800 metres and set a new Olympic record.

Now all eyes were on the 1500 metres.

Did Snell have enough stamina to win a second gold?

Three and three-quarter laps of the track.

Regarded by many, the 1500 metres, as the blue riband of the Games.

Back in the familiar position, bringing up the rear of the field - Peter Snell, who seems to run...

The race was relatively slow.

I felt I needed to be up close to the front.

And pretty much stayed that way until

the main action of the 1500 metres in the last lap.

Look at Snell now. What's Snell going to do?

He's absolutely caught on the kerb. There's no way through.

I had to actually push my way out,

check whether anyone else was doing anything.

Nothing was happening. I thought,

"Well, I'm not going to wait any longer."

Snell's endurance training allowed him to

unleash an astonishing final kick.

Look at Snell go!

The famous New Zealander's kick.

He exploded then.

One can only do this sort of kick if you're floating and cruising.

It's not about speed.

I only looked to be going fast.

If you're looking at my running action, I am lengthening my stride

and I have the energy left to be able to do that.

And Simpson's moving up. He was in the silver medal position.

He's still there.

Snell's going to be champion. Snell wins.

And Simpson's going to lose it! Snell wins.

Well, I think if you look at film,

I look pretty relaxed.

There's no sort of collapsing over the line stuff, a la Bannister.

Oh! And Simpson crashes down as he goes across the line.

Snell's twin victories seemingly vindicated

Arthur Lydiard's coaching strategy.

Yet even after this, his methods

were still mistrusted by the New Zealand athletics authorities,

so Lydiard accepted an offer to coach in Finland which,

since Paavo Nurmi's retirement, had not won a single Olympic gold medal.

TRANSLATION: The Finnish runners didn't train enough.

What he brought with him

was that you had to run a minimum of 100 miles

or 160 kilometres a week,

and this totally changed the attitude of the Finnish runners.

At the Munich Olympics in 1972, Pekka Vasala,

having followed Lydiard's training regime,

made an immediate impact in the 1500 metres.

Vasala comes on the outside, but Vasala seems to have the speed.

And Vasala comes home for another gold medal for Finland.

Vasala was always the danger.

When Vasala took the gold medal, it was the first time that

Finland had won the Olympic 1500 metres since 1928.

His countryman Lasse Viren also won gold,

in the 5000 and 10,000 metres.

Arthur Lydiard was credited with this re-establishment

of the Finnish Olympic tradition.

Of course, it meant a lot to me, but even more to the people of Finland,

who have loved running ever since Paavo Nurmi.

In the 1970s, Lydiard's methods were being adopted by coaches and athletes from around the world,

who believed his endurance training held the key to winning Olympic gold.

But, by 1978,

a new Olympic power had emerged which would challenge this consensus

with fresh approaches to training, producing a generation of runners

who would dominate the Games for the next decade.

Leading this new golden era for British athletics was Sebastian Coe.

Coe coming up to the finish line and I think he's got it!

A new world record for Great Britain and for Sebastian Coe.

Poetry in motion is an overused phrase but he seemed to float.

His greatness was the speed to be able to just bury his opponents.

But it's Sebastian Coe, really making the rest of this field

look very, very pedestrian.

He was incredibly difficult to beat.

Do you go hard?

Yes, he's going to be able to stay with you

cos he can run world record pace.

Do you sit and wait?

No, he's got great 400 metre pace.

He can out-kick you over 150, 200 metres.

Between 1978 and 1980,

Coe set new world records

for every middle distance event.

And he's going to be very close.

Tremendous run...and he's done it!

But Coe was hotly pursued by fellow Briton Steve Ovett,

who matched Coe's 1500 metre world record time.

So Ovett matches that world record

and he matches Sebastian Coe every step of the way to Moscow.

I don't think I probably raced against anybody who was more naturally talented.

Coe and Ovett would form an intense rivalry.

But who was the best?

The Moscow Olympics would decide.

The Games started disastrously for Coe.

Despite holding the world record,

he lost the 800 metres to Steve Ovett.

My 800 metres was a pretty unspectacular performance

and I ran very poorly.

So I then had effectively three days to sort of regroup.

Coe was written off by the British press but he had one more chance

for Olympic glory in the final of the 1500 metres.

Ovett, though, was now favourite to win.

If I was honest, I would have put my house on

Ovett winning the 1500 metres.

Seb was meant to win the 8, so Ovett had won his event. Here we are at 1500,

an event Ovett had not been beaten in

up to that point in his senior career.

Coe, the broken man, you know, had lost the race he should've won.

We get into the call-up room.

You get put into this tiny room for 25 minutes,

before going out into the cauldron of the Olympic arena.

And everything that you've trained for, and everything that you've dreamed about,

is going to take place in the next half an hour or so.

Seb got up at one point and started pacing up and down the room,

which I took as a sign of nervousness.

Then Ovett gets up and I thought,

"Oh, hang on, here we go, Ovett's finally

"got the confidence to kind of walk up and down with Seb."

But then I started thinking, hang on a minute, this is maybe not the case. This is somebody who actually...

It's a bit like when you're going in a dangerous situation,

you want to hold the hand of somebody who's going to go along with you.

It was almost Steve wanting to feel as though they were in this together,

whereas Seb was incredibly focused and didn't want to chat at all.

And I guess I went into the race knowing that,

with my 800 metres speed, which had returned, I just thought,

"Look, the only way I'm going to lose this is if I'm out of contact,

"because there's nobody in the field who's going to outrun me over 400 metres.

For me, making my final was my gold medal, if you like.

I was 19, just delighted to be there, in this massive stadium in Moscow.

It's full and you are on the start line and this is the Olympic final.

The gun goes and you're still standing there!

So I was last, right at the very beginning,

got into the race and it was slow early on.

Ovett's in fourth place, covering it nicely. Moving up behind Coe.

The race was very slow. We got to 800 metres in 2.09, I think.

The English schoolgirls' 800 metres that year

was run in a quicker time.

And then Jurgen Straub,

as though he'd sort of looked down onto the track

and picked the imaginary mark,

suddenly just ran for home over 700 metres.

So, in essence, we had two warm-up laps and an 800,

and, of course, under those circumstances, I accepted.

There was very little way I was going to lose that race.

Coe is starting his sprint now.

Coe hits the front, looks around and he's got Ovett on his shoulder.

And now this is the test, he's got two metres on him,

and Ovett's going to have to sprint all the way here.

Coe's away at the front and it looks as if Coe's going to do it.

Coe is going to win the 1500 metres

and Ovett's going to get only a bronze medal.

A fantastic run by Coe. He's got it, he's got the gold!

In second place, Straub...

Coe's victory was a tactical triumph.

The race had been over six seconds slower than his own world record,

and he had used his devastating final kick

to speed to the finish line.

Watching Coe win gold in Moscow was his father Peter,

who, behind the scenes, had masterminded his Olympic victory.

Peter Coe had constructed a new training regime

which rejected the strategy of Arthur Lydiard.

He was absolutely central to everything I did.

And he really did do it very differently.

He made the judgment that I shouldn't be just bashing out

mile after mile without any real thought behind it.

So I didn't come from that school of running at the time.

Like Arthur Lydiard, for instance, genuinely thought that

you had to be comfortable and almost certainly be able to run a marathon.

He expected that for people like Peter Snell.

Peter Coe designed a training method known as speed endurance.

Unlike interval training, which varied the pace,

this regime concentrated on extended sprints at high intensity.

-Inside half a minute now.

-Right.

In the streets and hills around his hometown of Sheffield,

Sebastian Coe would repeatedly run

800 metre sprints with one-minute rests.

This conditioned him to finish races with a burst of acceleration.

We live in a part of a city where, when you leave your front door,

almost any direction is up, so that you're not short of hill running.

If you think of it in terms of speed endurance,

you are mentally equipping him to go through not so much a pain barrier,

but to learn that no matter how badly he feels, he can still go.

And when you're faced with the last lap of solo run in a world record,

there is no running training, there is no physiological secrets,

other than that single bloody-minded will to hang on

and come sprinting through that line.

But, in 1983, Coe was struck down by a rare blood disorder

and this illness seemed to have dented his hopes of winning

a second gold at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Many in the press questioned whether he should be selected at all.

I declare open the Olympic Games of Los Angeles.

Here, at the Coliseum in 1984,

Coe would renew his battle on the track

with fellow Britons Steve Ovett and Steve Cram.

It was hot and humid in LA and the race started

at a ferocious pace,

far quicker than in Moscow four years earlier.

They were very different races.

They were virtually six, seven seconds quicker.

There was no stuffing around.

It was going to take its toll on me.

It definitely took its toll on Steve Ovett.

At the bell, with a lap to go, Steve Ovett was forced to drop out

due to respiratory problems.

Now the race for gold would be between the two remaining Brits,

Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram.

I knew I was in trouble.

I was tired, so with 300 to go,

I still tried to do what I knew I wanted to do.

The pre-race plan was at 300 to go, to go hard,

so I've tried to take Seb on at that point.

The race really on now. Coe responds immediately.

He's the Olympic champion. Can he do it again?

I'd recognised the big threat that day was Steve Cram because I didn't

ever want him to be in front of me,

because he just always grew in stature and strength,

and loved to see the open track in front of him.

And you know that when you put your foot on the accelerator,

and you find a little bit but not a lot,

but the other guy responds very easily to what you do,

then the writing was on the wall.

He's the Olympic champion. Can he do it again?

Steve Cram in second place, champion of the world, follows him,

and Coe comes away.

Cram digs in but Coe comes away to retain the Olympic title.

Sebastian Coe, back at his best, is the Olympic champion again.

Cram gets the silver, Abascal the bronze.

Of course, I crossed the line and Seb was jubilant.

I was less jubilant.

My first emotion was just relief.

Then you sort of recognised,

"Oh, well, I've won the Olympic title. Let's party a bit."

Pretty much stuck his fingers up to the press.

I mean, it wasn't quite... It was one finger that went like that,

but we all knew what that meant.

Sebastian Coe had become the only man in history

to win two Olympic 1500 metres titles

But this was the last time that he would appear in the Olympic Games.

PA: The next event on the track, the men's 1500 metres final.

Four years later, at the Seoul Olympics in 1988,

Steve Cram and Peter Elliot would attempt to win Britain's third successive 1500 metre gold.

Lining up against them was a 21-year-old from Kenya, Peter Rono,

who was in his first-ever international competition.

Steve Cram was a current world record holder in the mile,

and obviously a great runner,

and Peter Elliot had run the fastest time in 800.

The Olympic final men's 1500 metres under way

and the two Britons on the inside making sure they're not boxed,

push up in front.

So I was what they call the underdog.

Kenya's occupying three of the last four places.

Two of the top guys in the world

and he did exactly what he was asked to do.

After only two laps,

Peter Rono passed Cram and Elliot to take the lead.

They would tell you they didn't expect him

to be able to maintain that pace right through to the finish tape,

but we had trained for that.

Elliott chasing Rono but he can't get there.

Rono wins, Elliott second.

Rono crossed the line ahead of the much-fancied Brits to become

the youngest ever winner of the Olympic 1500 metres, aged 21.

Winning the Olympics is the greatest feeling.

I will treasure it forever. It's inspired my children.

I have a son who I'm always telling people

that he's going to win the 2016.

Steve Cram was one of the greatest runners

never to win the Olympic 1500 metres.

The three Kenyans go on a lap of honour.

They've won the 800, they've won the 1500,

they've won the steeplechase.

Peter Rono's victory signalled a shift away from an era

of British supremacy and heralded the arrival of Africa,

which would come to dominate the Olympic 1500 metres.

Rono came from Eldoret, high up in the Rift Valley in Kenya.

It is from this one region that an astonishing number

of world-class athletes have left their marks on the Olympics.

If you kind of take Eldoret as a centre

and you kind of draw a circumference of maybe 50, 60, 70 kilometres,

all around Eldoret,

you'll find anything between 25 and 30 Olympic gold medallists.

This region, which has produced such an extraordinary number of gold medallists,

is located 7,000 feet above sea level.

Living in this high-altitude environment

has a physiological impact on the bodies of these athletes.

When you go higher up into the mountains,

the higher you go, the less oxygen there is,

and the harder your body needs to work as you train.

Your body responds to this by making more red blood cells,

your haemoglobin count goes up, your volume of blood increases.

The extra volume of blood produced by running at high altitude

improves athletes' capacity to transport and use oxygen.

This is known as VO2 max.

These athletes have a higher VO2 max as they have more blood

and that's because they have lived in high altitude since childhood.

It was over 40 years earlier that the advantages of high altitude

were initially discovered with the emergence

of Africa's first Olympic superstar.

Born in Eldoret, Kipchoge Keino burst onto the scene in the 1960s.

He set new world records for the 3000 and 5000 metres

and he was also a devastating middle distance runner.

My dad was really keen on athletics and encouraged me.

I used to run to school, run back home,

and that's part of the exercise I was doing.

Apart from that, I also competed in school and I won some of the events.

It was athletics coach John Velzian who first spotted Keino's potential.

You knew this boy was a champion. It's the way he placed his feet,

the way his legs moved, the way the arms moved.

There was what we probably just call style.

In 1968, Keino prepared to run for Kenya at the Mexico Olympics.

Situated over 7,000 feet above sea level,

the Mexico Olympics would be the first time

the Games had been held at high altitude.

Many athletes would struggle to cope in this environment.

Mexico was the most physically demanding Olympics

in the history of the Games.

Despite this, Keino, like the great Paavo Nurmi,

would enter more than one race.

In Mexico, I was entered for three events -

the 10,000, 5000 and 1500 metres.

But the Mexico Olympics did not start well for Keino.

Illness forced him out of the 10,000 metres and,

although he returned to win a silver medal in the 5000 metres,

medical advice warned him not to compete for

the title he really wanted to win - the 1500 metres.

They told me I have a gallstone. I should not run.

So I told them, "No, I am going to run".

"I came here to run and if I die, I die for my country."

For the first lap, Keino stayed at the back of the race,

biding his time.

After the second lap, I started to pick up,

and I opened a gap of about 30 metres.

Keino hit the front with an incredible surge of pace.

He was seemingly unaffected by illness and high altitude.

Keino kept the lead for the final two laps of the race.

He eventually won by 20 metres - the largest winning margin

in the history of the event.

Well, he destroyed the race completely, didn't he?

If you look back upon that today,

3.34 in a 1500 metres,

at 2,000 metres altitude - it still, to this day, is an incredible race.

Never again would the Games be held at high altitude.

Keino's Olympic victory made him a national icon.

Kenya had only just thrown off colonial rule

to become a fully independent country.

It was a glory for us.

We felt we had done something for ourselves and for the country.

At that time, Kenya was a relatively new country,

having gained independence in 1963, so Kenya looked for a hero.

They wanted somebody to stand above the crowd,

somebody whom they could identify with,

in terms of Kenya taking its place in the world of nations.

Kipchoge Keino's achievement on the track has been the inspiration

for successive generations of Kenyan Olympic athletes.

I remember when I was growing up,

songs were sung of praise about Kip Keino.

It's something that is very inspiring.

I always tell people that Kip Keino can be a very small man,

but he has a very big heart.

And, with 40% of people in the Rift Valley

living below the poverty line,

running has taken on an even greater significance.

They saw athletics as a way of getting themselves out of the poverty,

out of the difficulties which they saw their parents and grandparents struggling.

This has become the driving motivation to succeed at the Olympics.

You will see a huge number of youngsters, all ages,

training out on the roads and the pathways.

And these young kids are seeing superstars training among them every day.

They have Olympic champions, they have world champions, world record holders.

They run after them, two or three kilometres, they'll follow them.

This determination, combined with the natural environment

of high altitude, has created a culture of running in Kenya.

And this tradition has continued into the 21st century.

Noah Ngeny, in 2000,

and Asbel Kiprop, in 2008,

became the latest runners from the Rift Valley

to win gold at the 1500 metres.

Today, competition to represent their country at the Olympic Games

is tougher than in any other nation in the world.

Well, if you look at a team that's going to the World Championships or

the Olympic Games, there's a maximum of three competitors in each event.

And if you take the 1500, in which Kenya has won the gold and silver,

it means that the fourth, fifth and sixth

would probably have got those places if they'd also been there.

It's that level of competition.

This pool of talent has made Kenya the most dominant

and feared force on the athletics track.

But their supremacy has been challenged by one extraordinary runner from another part of Africa.

This man is Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco.

He was the embodiment of everything

that's needed in a great 1500 metre runner,

possibly the greatest 1500 metre runner.

The biggest compliment I can ever pay anybody is that I think,

if I'd raced against him, he would have been a right bloody handful.

Hicham El Guerrouj was born in the tough industrial city

of Berkan on the Moroccan coast,

and it was here he began dreaming of becoming an Olympic champion.

TRANSLATION: I started racing very early,

I started in 1987. I was very young.

My father and mother didn't want to let me.

I said to them, "My dream is to become an athlete,

"my dream is to represent my country,

"my dream is to mount the podium at the Olympics."

At 16, El Guerrouj began training at

the Moroccan national athletics centre in Rabat.

TRANSLATION: In 1992 we won the World Junior Championship.

At that time, I noticed his courage in competition

because talent alone isn't enough.

You need to have the right character as a runner.

I knew this boy would go far.

El Guerrouj rose to prominence in the 1990s

with a series of outstanding performances,

and he was considered the favourite to win the 1500 metre title

at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

When I went to Atlanta, I dreamt of only one thing.

That was to come first, but I had no strategy in mind,

no idea how I was going to run the race,

and then the drama happened.

El Guerrouj is right there and there he goes.

And El Guerrouj has gone!

He's down.

The bell is ringing.

I couldn't believe it.

I got up and carried on but it was too late.

That was really hard, quite traumatic,

but I have to say it taught me a lesson, a lesson in every sense.

After this defeat in Atlanta, El Guerrouj and his coach Abdelkader

returned to their high altitude training camp

in Ifrane in the Atlas Mountains.

Hicham trained there nearly all this career, about 14 years in all.

The first two months of the training would start in Rabat,

then he'd go up to Ifrane to get used to the altitude.

Around March, we go up to high altitude.

It's a huge effort, you are in physical agony sometimes,

but when you go back down to sea level, you run really fluidly.

Conditioned by his high altitude training,

El Guerrouj set a new 1500 metre world record

of 3 minutes and 26 seconds,

a record which still stands today.

And going into the 2000 Sydney Olympics,

he had been unbeaten in the 1500 for three years.

El Guerrouj was the odds-on favourite to win.

And he's in the pole position.

It's getting faster and faster and El Guerrouj is in the driving seat.

But hot on his heels were Noah Ngeny and Bernard Lagat,

the finest Kenyan runners since Kipchoge Keino.

Just make sure that all the steps that you was taking,

each lap, each step that you was taking, I was just a metre away.

So for me, I just followed him.

50 metres to go, I started to strike.

Lagat is still there.

This is going to be a right fight to the line.

El Guerrouj is not going to make it.

Ngeny is going to get there.

El Guerrouj is going to lose.

Oh, I can't believe it! Ngeny wins it.

El Guerrouj... This, for me, is the biggest surprise that

we've seen on the track at these Olympic Games, Brendan.

For me, he deserved to be the Olympic champion in 2000.

We were great rivals and I hope we will always be friends.

After two Olympic defeats, Athens in 2004

would be El Guerrouj's last chance

to prove he had the mental resolve to win.

But only months before the Games,

illness threatened his Olympic dream.

I discovered I had asthma and I underwent medical treatment

for four months for my asthma, and I also lost a race. I came eighth.

It was a disaster for me psychologically. It was hard.

Also challenging for the gold medal was Kenya runner, Bernard Lagat,

who had finished just behind El Guerrouj in Sydney four years earlier.

I had only one thought in my head - that was to be brave,

to commit fully and never hold back.

They get underway, the 1500 metre final,

three and a half minutes for El Guerrouj

to fulfil what everybody thinks

is his destiny - to win this.

I kept myself in check. I didn't want to be in the group,

to avoid accidents, to avoid falling.

At 300 metres, in my head,

I started to say, "Hicham, now you have to go. Now you have to go."

What came next was one of the great feats in Olympic history.

Over the final two laps, El Guerrouj, pursued by Bernard Lagat,

accelerated constantly, running the remainder of the race in controlled

100-metres bursts, each one run quicker that the previous one.

It was a perfect 1500 metre race, the way he ran it.

He was strong, he was so, so strong that every single move he made,

you couldn't see it,

because it was seamless and it was just a progression.

It was just a brilliant piece of distance running.

But the race was about to become even more astonishing.

At the bell, El Guerrouj and Lagat increased their pace further,

as they started their final kick for the finish line.

El Guerrouj striking for home,

chasing the gold medal he so wants, for himself and for his country.

300 metres remaining and he kicks again,

and this time he's accelerating.

Lagat was still behind me because he too had a dream.

His dream was to become Olympic champion,

to beat me once again, but I didn't want to lose.

I absolutely had to win that medal

because I knew that medal would change my whole life,

my whole sporting career.

And he's still got more. Round the top bend.

El Guerrouj is truly testing them.

El Guerrouj coming under pressure from Bernard Lagat of Kenya.

Lagat looks comfortable.

Rui Silva finishing like a train on the outside as well.

El Guerrouj needs to fight here if he wants this one.

Lagat's coming on the outside.

Has El Guerrouj got anything left? It's going to be close.

And when Lagat overtook,

I pictured those losses in Sydney and Atlanta all over again.

I was telling myself, "Hicham, don't lose. Hicham, don't lose."

Has El Guerrouj got anything left? It's going to be close.

El Guerrouj is fighting back. El Guerrouj is going to get there.

Come on, El Guerrouj! He's got it!

He's got it, the gold medal!

It was extraordinary.

I can tell you - that victory changed me.

I relaxed, I felt light.

This would be El Guerrouj's last 1500 metre race.

But he retuned to the track three days later

to win gold in the 5000 metres,

the first man since Paavo Nurmi in 1924 to win both Olympic events.

El Guerrouj retired as the greatest 1500 metre champion

in the history of the Olympics.

I didn't want to lose.

I wanted to bring hope to my life, to my children,

hope to the generations of young people watching the race.

Losing in life, it shouldn't exist in your dictionary.

The word "lose" doesn't exist.

The word "lose", for me, doesn't exist.

On the 7th August 2012, in the Olympic Stadium in London,

12 men will take their marks for the final of the 1500 metres.

DAVID COLEMAN: Three and three-quarter laps of the track.

Regarded by many, the 1500 metres, as the blue riband of the Games.

To win gold,

one runner must have the qualities of the great champions of the past.

Look at Snell go! The famous New Zealander...

The endurance of Paavo Nurmi,

the acceleration of Sebastian Coe...

And Coe comes away!

..and the will to win of Hicham El Guerrouj.

El Guerrouj is going to get there! Come on, El Guerrouj!

Only then can they win the greatest Olympic race of all.

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