In the early part of the 2000 season, Hicham El Guerrouj continued his dominance of the 1 mile and 1500m events that he had enjoyed during 1998 and 1999, and there seemed little doubt that he would win the 1500m gold medal at the Olympic Games to be held later that year in Sydney. He was supreme in the mile, winning a number of very fast races, including a victory over William Chirchir (Kenya) at Oslo on 28 July, in a time of 3min 46.24 sec. He followed this with a win at London on 5 August in 3min 45.96 sec over Noah Ngeny (Kenya), who had run second to El Guerrouj in the 1999 World Championships. These two times recorded by El Guerrouj were the two fastest mile times of 2000, and gave him 6 of the 9 fastest times ever run. Later that month, on 25 August, he beat Chirchir again, at Brussels in 3min 47.91sec. He was no less dominant in the 1500m, where after winning an early season meet in Paris in 3min 30.75sec, he defeated Ngeny at Zurich on 11 August in a time of 3min 27.21sec, compared to Ngeny's second-place time of 3min 28.12sec - the two fastest times of the year. At Sydney, Chirchir was surprisingly eliminated in the heats, but El Guerrouj and Ngeny both won their respective semi-finals to set up another confrontation in the final on 29 September. In the final, El Guerrouj took the lead in the last lap (see photo above), and it was assumed that he would just continue to accelerate away from the opposition as he had done so many times before, but Ngeny stayed with him, and eventually passed El Guerrouj in the straight to record an upset victory. It was El Guerrouj's first defeat at 1500m since failing to finish in the previous Olympic final in 1996. (George Herringshaw)