Olympic Silver Medalist Moh Ahmed Wanted To Race Olympic Gold Medalist Joshua Cheptegei at Pre, But Wasn’t Allowed To. Why?
By LetsRun.com
June 3, 2022
When we saw that the Prefontaine Classic was going to hold two sections of the men’s 5,000 meters last weekend — one for Olympic champion Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda to chase his own world record of 12:35.36 on Friday and a second section on Saturday featuring many of the rest of the best guys in the world — we were puzzled. Why fly the world’s best distance runners all the way out to Eugene, Ore., only to have them run in separate races?
Turns out, we weren’t the only ones asking that question. A few minutes after finishing 4th in the Saturday section, Olympic silver medalist Moh Ahmed of Canada revealed he had asked for the opportunity to race Cheptegei on Friday night but was prevented from doing so.
“We wanted to be in that 5,000m with Cheptegei,” Ahmed said. “…Obviously the conditions were much better last night, honest to God. I don’t know. I really asked to be in that race, and I felt like they just kind of…that’s outside of the athlete’s control. A lot of people in the track & field world say, oh, you know athletes are dodging one other, this, that, and the other. And that’s not the case. Athletes, I think, want to race. We’re competitors. But there are many interests at play.”
We asked Ahmed, whose 12:47 pb is #11 all-time, if he received any explanation why he couldn’t race against Cheptegei.
“Maybe I wasn’t good enough,” he responded, shrugging.
So to summarize: the Olympic silver medalist — a member of a team sometimes criticized for skipping major meets in favor of staging manicured time trials — wants to race the Olympic gold medalist and is told it can’t happen. What a joke.
Cheptegei’s world record attempt wasn’t even close, by the way. Despite decent conditions, he was never on pace and wound up running 12:57.99, more than 20 seconds off the record.
So how — and why — did this happen? Pre Classic co-meet director Michael Reilly and Cheptegei’s agent Jurrie van der Velden did not respond to interview requests for this story, while Ahmed’s agent Dan Lilot declined to comment. But we can piece together a rough idea.
Initially, Pre was not meant to stage two men’s 5,000s — the Saturday section was going to be a 2-mile. That changed, however, after athletes and their managers requested it be run as a 5000 in part to allow Ethiopian athletes such as Selemon Barega and Berihu Aregawi to run a fast 5,000-meter time to aid in their chances for selection to the World Championships (Ethiopia picks its 5,000 team based on season’s bests).
So now there were two 5,000s. But Cheptegei’s race was, ostensibly, a world record attempt. And in those situations, it’s not uncommon for an athlete’s management to be able to block other athletes from competing. That offers two benefits: it allows the record chaser to focus entirely on the clock rather than battling for the win; and, if the record attempt goes awry, it still gives the record chaser a good chance to save face and win the race (though as Letesenbet Gidey showed on Friday, this doesn’t always happen).
Did that happen at the Pre Classic last weekend? We can’t say for sure. But there’s no other good reason (well maybe they needed to keep a good 5,000 during the main program for TV purposes as the 5000 was a DL event) for the Pre Classic to prevent a showdown between the Olympic gold and silver medalists — especially when at least one of them wanted to race the other.
The next time someone complains about the lack of sellout crowds in Eugene, we’ll remind them of this episode. A major pro meet should never have two sections of the same event — it reminds the fans that what they are watching is a largely an exhibition. Plus the fans/media at least deserve an explanation. In our sport, the athletes’ concerns are constantly being prioritized over that of the fans. Even if the answer is, “Cheptegei wanted to focus solely on the record,” tell us/them something.
Watch Ahmed explain how he wanted to race Cheptegei below