04: Greatest Athletes Spotlight: Hicham El Guerrouj
Written By: Ben Drury
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Greatest Athletes Spotlight where every week I talk about the Greatest track and field athletes of all time.
In the past three weeks I have highlighted some of the greatest sprinters of all time, but this week I have switched it up and picked a middle-distance runner, Hicham El Guerrouj.
El Guerrouj is a former Moroccan middle-distance runner who specialized in the 1500m, 5000m and the Mile during his career that spanned 12 years. During his career, El Guerrouj had amazing success on some of Track and Field’s biggest stages by winning medals and running some of the fastest times ever.
In the World Championships, the Olympics, or other championships, El Guerrouj was very successful and it was very rare for him to lose. During a nine year span, El Guerrouj competed in 86 finals, that number is shocking by itself, but the crazier part is that out of those 86 races he only lost three. Unfortunately for El Guerrouj, two of those three losses came at the Olympics.
But, let’s not think too much about his losses at the Olympics, but his wins. At the Olympics, El Guerrouj would win one gold medal in the 1500m and one in the 5000m, both at the 2004 Athens Games. In the World Championships, El Guerrouj was also very successful and won four gold medals in the 1500m.
Even though El Guerrouj has a great collection of medals, his two greatest achievements aren’t his Olympic titles, but his world records. The two world records El Guerrouj holds are in his two specialty events the 1500m and the mile.
In 1998, El Guerrouj broke the first of the two records, the 1500m, by running 3:26 at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. In the following year, El Guerrouj continued his record-breaking success and broke the second of the two records in the mile in a time of 3:43.13, this world record was also broken at the Olympic Stadium in Rome.
There are lots of other world records that were broken during El Guerrouj’s career and most of them have been broken again since then, but El Guerrouj’s records are different, and still remain unbroken.
El Guerrouj’s records may not stay unbroken forever, but they are for now and this makes Hicham El Guerrouj one of the greatest track and field athletes and possibly the greatest middle-distance runner of all time.
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