A race for the ages is in prospect at next year's Helsinki world championships if three of the world's great runners stay fit, healthy and focused.
The men's 5,000 metres on the final Saturday at last month's Athens Olympics was one of the highlights of the athletics programme, pitting the 1,500 metres gold medallist Hicham El Guerrouj against Ethiopia's 10,000 champion Kenenisa Bekele.
Moroccan El Guerrouj just squeezed out a victory to crown a career, which prior to Athens contained everything but an Olympic gold.
Now another African-born runner has set his sights on the world 5,000 title when the championships return to the pleasant Finnish capital which staged the inaugural edition of the now-biennial competition 21 years ago.
Saif Saaeed Shaheen, born in Kenya but now running for Qatar, defeated Kenya's three Olympic steeplechase medallists with almost contemptuous ease on the second day of the world athletics final on Sunday.
Although he was issued with a Qatar passport in August last year, the Kenyan Olympic Committee refused permission for Shaheen to run in Athens for his new nation.
The world champion responded with a world record in Brussels then ran the fifth fastest time ever on Sunday with his former team mates struggling in his wake.
"I will be running the 5,000 metres and steeplechase in Helsinki next year," he said afterwards.
Bekele was named as the men's athlete of the year by the International Association of Athletics Federations on Sunday in recognition of his Olympic 10,000 triumph, his three world records (one indoor) and his third successive world cross country double.
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"I would love to race Hicham and Shaheen," he said.
Women's athlete of the year Yelena Isinbayeva confessed to fatigue after failing to break the world women's pole vault record for the ninth time this year.
The 22-year-old Russian failed three times at 4.93 metres on Sunday but she is certain to better that mark next year and possibly fulfill her ambition of cracking the five-metre barrier in Helsinki.
"I'm so tired," she said. "It's been a great season for me but it was so difficult today. I didn't have the physical power. It's so difficult to be in fighting form at this time of the year."
The five metre mark, whether it is achieved in Helsinki or not, should be a formality for Isinbayeva.
She said on Sunday she had cleared it in training in her hometown of Volgograd on June 7, this year.
"I jumped 4.90 and my coach said 'Try 4.95'. I jumped 4.95 and my coach said try five metres and I said okay. I jumped five metres and then I tried 5.05 but I didn't jump it," she said.
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