Mo Farah: Collapse in New York will not affect London Marathon chances

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/apr/08/mo-farah-collapse-new-york-london-marathon-kipsang

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There was a swipe of the hand and a sharp waggle of the head before Mo Farah brushed away suggestions that his collapse after last month's New York half-marathon is a worrying portent for Sunday's London Marathon.

In fact, Farah remains convinced he can win in his first attempt at 26.2 miles. His supremely lean physique – stripped of fat and free of tension – suggests Britain's double 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic and world champion is in shape to go very close.

And he was also keen to stress that his apparent distress in New York, where he was unconscious for three minutes and carted off in a wheelchair after finishing second to Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai, had not interrupted his preparations. Indeed his coach, Alberto Salazar, had him running 10 miles the next day. "New York was nothing to worry about," said Farah. "After that big fall [in the race] I just used up too much energy and mentally maybe I panicked and thought: 'What happened?' It was so cold. I've got no body fat; when you get so cold you have nothing to fight it.

"The public also needs to understand, it's not like I save anything in the race, you give it 110%," he added. "I knew I was a bit in trouble over the last three or four miles. I was seeing stars but I just wanted to finish. I was completely out of it afterwards."

But Farah pointed out that he has form when it comes to collapsing, including at the 2009 European cross-country championships, and that he was quickly chivvied back into action. "Salazar has been there and done it and he just told me: 'You're faking it. You're OK. Get up,'" joked Farah, who looked perky despite arriving only hours earlier on the red-eye flight from Nairobi.

"He told me: 'Go hard or go home – none of this collapsing stuff.' He was like: 'He's all right, no worries, go for a 10-mile run tomorrow.'"

Farah goes into Sunday's race as the 6-1 second-favourite, behind the world-record holder Wilson Kipsang, but he accepts there are half-a-dozen other potential winners in what he calls "by far the toughest London marathon field we have ever seen".

Few would dispute that. Emmanuel Mutai, the course-record holder, is also here, along with last year's winner Tsegaye Kebede and Stephen Kiprotich, the 2012 Olympic and 2013 world champion.

Geoffrey Mutai, who beat Farah by 17 seconds in New York, is another competitor but Farah is undaunted by their challenge or the distance. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe I could win," he said. "I couldn't do that. Every race I want to go out and win. My nature in everything I do is to try and win, be it computer games or anything else.

"This is about finding out whether I'm going to be good or not," he added. "I've achieved a lot on the track but I want to test myself – and it's going to be a big test on Sunday. In track races, you know that if you go to the front you control the race.

"I don't know what I will be doing here. I'm up against guys who could run two hours 07, two hours 06 or even two hours 02. I've gone straight in at the deep end and that's what champions do."

Farah is aiming to become the first British winner since Eamonn Martin, sporting a brushy moustache and Basildon athletics club mustard top, took this race back in 1993. But Farah says his primary goal is to wriggle under Steve Jones's UK marathon record of 2hr 7min 13sec set in 1985.

To that end Farah has spent the past three months 8,000 feet up in Kenya's rift valley, away from his wife and three children, apart from a brief reunion in New York. "Training has gone reasonably well," he said in a rare moment of doubt. "There have been a few hiccups but you get on with it."

When asked to elaborate, he said there had been no setbacks, merely that he has sometimes felt "a bit tired". That comes with the territory when you are running 130-140 miles a week.

Mostly, though, Farah looked full of beans on Tuesday. Sunday will be a much tougher test.