Ethiopia’s Selemon Barega upset world champion and world record holder Joshua Cheptegei to claim 10,000m gold in Tokyo’s first athletics final.
World 5,000m silver medallist Barega surged clear on the final lap’s back straight and refused to be reeled in, winning in 27 minutes 43.22 seconds.
Cheptegei responded sluggishly to Barega’s initial break, but finished second, 0.41 seconds back.
Britain’s Marc Scott was 14th, while compatriot Sam Atkin dropped out.
Scott and Atkin were competing in the place of Rio 2016 champion Mo Farah, who failed to qualify for the British team after making a return to the track following a three-year absence concentrating on marathon.
Uganda’s Cheptegei set world records in three different events across track and road in 2020, polishing his reputation after a commanding 10,000m success at Doha 2019.
However the 24-year-old has rarely raced in 2021, with patchy results.
Barega, whose promise has been clear since the 21-year-old won a world Under-20 5,000m title aged just 16, brings the title back to Ethiopia for the first time since Farah’s triumph at London 2012.
Compatriots Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele won back-to-back title at Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 respectively. Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo took the bronze.
Earlier in the afternoon, British trio Eilish McColgan, Amy-Louise Markovc and Jessica Judd failed to make it out of the 5,000m heats.
McColgan, whose mother won the 10,000m world title in the Japanese capital 30 years ago, said a physical race had taken a mental toll on her.
“I was shouting at them saying, ‘stop clipping me, stop clipping me;. Every single lap,” she said.
“I was constantly aware, I knew I was going to go down, I could just sense that someone was going to go down. That made me anxious, and I had no energy.
“It’s nuts, it is so far off my best, if someone had told me I’d have done that time, I would have thought I’d lose a leg doing that time.”
Sophie McKinna, who became the first British woman in 36 years to make a world shot put final at Doha 2019, could not make the same stage in Tokyo.
McKinna, who was one of the British athletes who had to self-isolate as a precaution after a Covid case on their flight to Tokyo, couldn’t improve on an opening attempt of 17.81m – 80cm short of her personal best.
Britain will be involved in the first Olympic mixed 4x400m relay tomorrow however after Cameron Chalmers, Zoey Clark, Emily Diamond and Lee Thompson were one of two fastest quartets outside of the automatic qualifying spots.
The Netherlands’ Sifan Hassan, attempting an unprecedented Olympic distance treble, won her opening outing on the track with a comfortable victory in her 5,000m heat. She also plans to compete in the 1500m and 10,000m, events in which she is world champion.
