No way Farah ending like this, says coach

Four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah is in good shape and will not be bringing his medal-laden career to an end just yet, his coach believes.

Afterwards he suggested he would have to consider his future on the track.

“There’s no way Mohamed Farah is going to end his career running around the track here,” said coach Gary Lough.

Farah, who won 5,000m and 10,000m gold at London 2012 and Rio 2016, fell 19 seconds outside the Olympic qualifying mark for the 10,000m event in Friday’s race and afterwards said: “I don’t know what to think or what’s next. If I can’t compete with the best why bother?”

But Lough said: “If it was just one of those ‘past your sell-by date’ or ‘you can’t do this anymore’ things… but it really, really is not that situation.”

Farah had already missed the chance to qualify at the European 10,000m Cup in Birmingham earlier in June, but had been recovering from injury on that occasion.

Lough added: “In terms of what’s next, I honestly don’t know. There wasn’t really a plan B – this was kind of a plan B after Birmingham, and there’s definitely not a plan C right at this minute.

“The most devastating and frustrating thing is that he’s in shape and he can do this.

“He struggles in conditions like this but doesn’t want to make excuses. That was the concern all day – the conditions and the cold.

“He struggled through the first half of the year. He continued and got things OK, got through the summer, he ran in Brussels.

“This year he’s been pretty good. He’s struggled to see the people that he usually would see because of Covid.”