The simplest math: “I can count to three,” Fisher said. “This sport is defined by the top three.” The fourth American to medal at 10k in 100 years!
SAINT-DENIS, France, By Adam Kilgore — Around the final turn, after 9,900 meters had been run, Grant Fisher’s field of vision cleared. He could see the finish line and the runners between him and it.
A tactical, complex, doozy of a race had been distilled down to the simplest math.
“I can count to three,” Fisher said. “This sport is defined by the top three.”
With wise strategy and stout finish, Grant Fisher broke through for a bronze — that long had been just out of reach.
Fisher had run more than six miles neck and neck with the world’s greatest distance runners, despite a brief scare two-thirds of the way through. He finished decisively behind only Joshua Cheptegei, the regal Ugandan champion who owns world records in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters and won his first gold medal in an Olympic record at 26:43.14. Fisher crossed in 26:43.46, which also would have broken the old Olympic record. Ethiopian Berihu Aregawi clipped Fisher for the silver in a photo finish, officially 0.02 seconds ahead.
Fisher became the first American 10,000 meters medalist since Galen Rupp in 2012, who won the first since Billy Mills in 1964, who won the first since Lewis Tewanima in 1912. Fisher understood the history well: He still has the T-shirt Mills signed for him as a high school sophomore when Mills came to speak at a Michigan Coaches Association banquet.
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