5000m and 10,000m · 2010s
Mo Farah
Racing chess, played at four-minute-mile pace.
The double, twice
5000m and 10,000m gold at London 2012, then both again at Rio 2016. Nobody had defended that double before and nobody has since. Add six world titles on top of it, across a decade in which he was essentially not beaten over 10,000m at a championship.
The kick was the plan
He did not usually have the fastest personal bests in the field. What he had was a finish nobody could live with, and a race plan built entirely around arriving at the last lap in position to use it. That meant tracking every move for twenty-four laps and never being boxed.
The attention cost
A 10,000m final is twenty-five laps of constant positional decisions, at an effort where thinking is expensive. He fell in the Rio 10,000m, got up, and still won it. That is a plan robust enough to survive being interrupted.
Afterwards
He moved to the roads with mixed results, which is worth including: the skill that made him unbeatable on the track was tactical, and a marathon gives you far less to be tactical about.
Decide in advance where your attention goes, then hold it there for the whole race rather than the exciting parts.
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