The men’s 5,000m was not a quick race but it had an exhilarating finish. Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo won it in a sprint past the two Kenyans, Nicholas Kimeli and Jacob Krop, who had been leading since the start. Kiplimo pulled the 30,000 crowd inside Alexander Stadium up to their feet as he passed them both with 100 metres or so to go. In all the excitement no one really noticed the guy they had just swept by on the home stretch. The three of them overtook him so quickly that, if you had blinked, you would have missed him on TV. He was Rosefelo Siosi, from the Solomon Islands, and he still had three more laps to go.
The crowd was just beginning to settle down again when Siosi crossed the line behind them, and kept right on running on around the next bend. By the time he came around again all the runners ahead of him had finished. They were standing by the side of the track, getting their wind back. Siosi had the track to himself now. In the stands, one by one, people seemed to realise what was going on. The noise swelled, and soon they were cheering all over again, even louder now than they had for the winners. On his last lap, which took 80 seconds, Siosi got one long standing ovation. He eventually finished in 17min 26.93sec, 90 seconds behind the field.
