Amos continues to haunt 800m world record holder Rudisha

Correspondent | Monday July 27, 2015 10:41

 

The 800m was once such a simple puzzle for David Rudisha and it used to have such a simple solution. Glide into the lead from the gun, shake off opponents as smoothly as dust from silk and humbly accept the crowd’s appreciation of your athletic genius. Which made it slightly rueful to watch the great Kenyan scratching his head at the Anniversary Games after another defeat at the hands of the brilliant Botswana's Nijel Amos.

It is becoming a recurring theme. Since striding gloriously away from the field at the London 2012 Olympics in a world record time of 1min 40.91sec Rudisha has met Amos six times. And he has lost every single race.

A serious knee injury in 2013 has much to do with it, as does Amos’s emergence from the callow 18-year-old who took silver behind Rudisha in 2012 to a fully fledged world star. But while Rudisha works his way back to his best form he appears to have no answer to his rival.

On Saturday he tried a different approach, easing his way into the race and saving his energy for a sprint finish down the home straight. Once again, though, he found his opponent’s finishing kick too powerful.

In truth Amos simply did what he has done for much of the past year: sit on Rudisha’s shoulder as he moved from third at the bell to second and then first, before unleashing those whirling arms and whirring legs with 50m remaining to edge ahead by half a metre.

The time – 1:44.57 – was nothing special but the performance was certainly smart. “I wasn’t expecting a tactical race,” said Amos afterwards. “I expected something much faster. I used to watch his videos as a youth, so running with him is a dream came true.”

Afterwards Rudisha talked like a man who believes his best form is a thing that might yet be grasped again. “Since 2012 I’ve had a lot of disappointment and not been doing a lot of speed work, so I’ve been working on that the past few weeks and I’ve seen an improvement,” he said. On this evidence, however, the improvement is unlikely to come quickly enough to make a difference when they meet again in Beijing in four weeks’ time.

THEGUARDIAN.UK