Cole Hocker, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr have the Moroccan’s 26-year-old mark of 3:26.00 in their sights
Only July 14 in 1998, Hicham El Guerrouj arrived in Rome with the aim of breaking Noureddine Morceli’s world 1500m record of 3:27.37 set in Nice in 1995. The sports world was still nursing a FIFA World Cup hangover as France had beaten Brazil 3-0 in the tournament final two days earlier. To escape the mid-summer heat, many Romans had gone on holiday, too, which meant the cavernous Stadio Olimpico in the Italian capital was largely empty.
As a young reporter for AW, I’d received an SOS from The Times to cover the meeting as their athletics correspondent, David Powell, had a bad back. It’s not just the athletes, I discovered, who miss events with injuries.
These were the days when big newspapers commissioned a freelance reporter for a major athletics event if their main writer was out of action. So I answered the call and flew to Rome mainly expecting to write about Mark Richardson challenging Thomas Schönlebe’s long-standing European 400m record of 44.33.
Before the 400m, though, at around 9pm local time we were treated to a world 1500m record as El Guerrouj sliced 1.37 seconds off Morceli’s mark. His time of 3:26.00 also came almost 40 years to the day after Herb Elliott of Australian ran a world record of 3:36.0 – exactly 10 seconds slower than the Moroccan.
Aged 23, El Guerrouj was approaching the peak of his career. After winning world indoor 1500m titles in 1995 and 1997, he won his first world outdoor crown in Athens in 1997 and he took to the track at this Golden Gala meeting in Rome with what he called his “Kenyan leopards”, Robert Kibet and Noah Ngeny, acting as pacemakers.
Hicham El Guerrouj (Getty)
El Guerrouj followed Kibet through 400m in 54.3, 800m in 1:50.7 and 1000m in 2:18.8 before Ngeny took over. The Moroccan hit the front just after the bell and powered around the final lap in 53.47 to run 3:26.00.
Runner-up Laban Rotich of Kenya ran 3:30.94 with John Kibowan third in 3:31.08 and Daniel Komen fourth in 3:31.10. Britain’s John Mayock ran 3:36.74 but was 10th.
The only problem is that the clock didn’t stop when El Guerrouj crossed the line, so it took around 20 minutes before his time was confirmed.
“I felt great the whole way. It was almost easy with the good track conditions and the excellent support of the pacemakers,” he said.
Hicham El Guerrouj (Mark Shearman)
“My dream is to run 3:24 and I hope to do it before this season is out,” he added. “If not I will be back to do it here.
“Before it was Aouita’s time,” he continued, referring to Said Aouita, the former world record-holder for 1500m. “Then it was Morceli’s time. Now it’s Hicham’s time.
“Right now I feel only the clock can beat me. Hicham is my only enemy.”
Seb Coe and Hicham El Guerrouj (Getty)
His goal afterwards was to run 3:24, a time his coach, Abdelkader Kada, believed he could achieve. The record was never improved, though, as it remains the world record to this day.
The following year El Guerrouj returned to Rome and took the one mile record down to 3:43.13. Like his 1500m mark, it also survives today.
READ MORE: Hicham El Guerrouj interview
At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney he was out-kicked by his old pacemaker Ngeny but he bounced back to win the 1500m and 5000m titles at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
“I’m happy that my world records are still alive,” El Guerrouj told AW in May. And I’d like them to survive a bit longer! I think one day they will be broken, maybe by Jakob (Ingebrigtsen) or maybe another athlete. It is natural for this to happen. But I’m happy to be part of the history and to participate in the evolution of track and field.”
Can the class of 2024 beat the mark? They’re getting closer for sure. Ingebrigtsen has run 3:26.73 in Monaco this summer whereas Olympic champion Hocker clocked 3:27.65 to win in Paris and Kerr has improved the British record to 3:27.79.
Read more vintage reports in our AW archive, which is available here.
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