Said Aouita

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
1984 Olympic 5000m gold



Said Aouita dominated middle distance running in the 1980s at all distances between 800m and 5000m. He raced often and he ran fast, and his name monopolised the all-time lists at many of these distances. His first major international competition was the 1983 World Championships held in Helsinki where he contested the 1500m. Although lacking in relative experience, Aouita came to Helsinki with the fastest time of the year, having run 3min 32.54sec at Firenze two months earlier. At Helsinki, the pace dawdled for the first 1000m, tactics that did not suit Aouita, and he was outkicked by the sprinters, finishing third and learning a valuable lesson. Aouita improved his times significantly in the early part of the 1984 season, moving to third on the all-time 1500m list and second on the 5000m list. This left him with a dilemma as to what event to enter at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles later that year, but he decided in the end to contest the longer race. The 5000m at Los Angeles was run at a very fast pace set by Antonio Leitao (Portugal), which suited Aouita much better than the tactics used in Helsinki. He stayed behind Leitao and then sprinted past him on the last lap to win in 13min 05.59sec (see photo above), the third-fastest 5000m ever run. Aouita had come very close to breaking a number of World Records in 1984, and the following year he finally broke through. At the Bislett Games in Oslo on 27 July, he took just 1/100 of a second off the 5000m World Record held by David Moorcroft (Great Britain) clocking 13min 00.40sec. At Berlin on 23 August, he recorded a time 3min 29.46sec for 1500m, breaking the World Record that Steve Cram (Great Britain) had set only five weeks earlier. (Ron Casey)