El Guerrouj’s Time Has Come in 1,500

When Hicham El Guerrouj remembers the Atlanta Olympics, he remembers the gridlock, the congestion, the mass of humanity that nearly left him trampled underfoot after he tripped and fell entering the bell lap of the men’s 1,500-meter final.

It was the Mary Decker-Zola Budd moment of the Games, this time with Morocco’s El Guerrouj going down in a heap when he clipped the heel of his archrival, Noureddine Morceli of Algeria, the eventual winner.

“It was the black point of my life,” El Guerrouj says.

Wednesday night at the World Championships, El Guerrouj almost tripped again, but this time it was on the metal rail of the Olympic Stadium motorized tracking camera, a low-level hurdle blocking the smooth completion of his long-awaited victory lap.

El Guerrouj momentarily stumbled, but he never lost his grip on the gold-fringed Moroccan flag, the first trophy he received after wresting the 1,500-meter championship from Morceli.

Until Wednesday, Morceli had dominated the event in major competitions, winning the world championship in ‘91, ’93 and ’95 and the Olympic title in ’96.

But El Guerrouj finally broke through here--so decisively that a demoralized Morceli allowed himself to be passed twice on the final lap, failing to even medal.

El Guerrouj, 22, won the gold medal in 3 minutes 35.83 seconds, with the silver and bronze going to Spanish runners Fermin Cacho and Reyes Estevez. Cacho, the 1992 Olympic champion, placed second in 3:36.63, and Estevez outlegged Morceli to the finish third in 3:37.26.

Morceli wound up fourth in 3:37.37--a full 10 seconds off his 1995 world-record time--and refused to talk to reporters as he dejectedly made his way through the mixed zone.

If it was a turning point in a rivalry that has been called North Africa’s answer to Sebastian Coe-Steve Ovett, it was eerily anticlimactic. When El Guerrouj made his move entering the fourth lap, Morceli failed to respond, drifting back to a distant second, then third, before fading down the last straightaway.

So meek was Morceli’s challenge that Cacho said he felt “sorry for Morceli. He is not in as good shape as in past years.”

But Morceli was running with a weighty burden. His brother, Abdel Kader, died July 26 after being hit by a car and falling into a coma. Morceli interrupted his training to fly back to Algeria for the funeral, then flew to Greece last weekend to compete in the World Championships.

“This is not a good thing for training,” said Abderrahmane Morceli, an older brother who helps train Noureddine. “His training was good, but he was not fresh.”

Abderrahmane attributed Morceli’s sluggish race Wednesday to “mainly a problem of concentration.”

El Guerrouj spent much of his post-victory news conference discussing Aht-lahnta as if it were an evil spirit that had to have been purged by a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

“Atlanta was the black point of my life, for sure,” El Guerrouj said. “It has been very difficult to forget I lost the Olympic title.

“This, for sure, will help me forget about the day after day thinking about the Olympics.”

El Guerrouj dedicated his victory to King Hassan II of Morocco, whose “support was critical for me.”

Morocco’s track coach, Aziz Daouda, said King Hassan phoned El Guerrouj “10 minutes after he fell. His Majesty explained that [El Guerrouj] is young and it’s not the end of the world, that all Moroccans considered him the winner of this race.”

The phone call overwhelmed El Guerrouj, who claimed it changed his life.

“It was as if another El Guerrouj was born at that time,” he said. “There is no similarity between that El Guerrouj and this one right now.”

Time is a great healer, but so is a winning time at the World Championships.

“I am young,” El Guerrouj said philosophically. “I have time to go back and win the Olympics. . . .

“For the last 20 years, we have had Sebastian Coe, we have had Steve Cram, we have had Said Aouita and we have had Morceli. Now, I hope it is time for El Guerrouj. I hope it will be that way for many years.”

Track Notes

Javier Sotomayor of Cuba made one attempt to break his own World Championships high jump record of 7 feet 10 1/2 inches, failed and then walked off the track, settling for his second World Championship gold medal with a winning mark of 7-9 1/4. Poland’s Artur Partyka and Australia’s Timothy Forsyth, who both cleared 7-8 1/2, took silver and bronze, respectively. . . .

Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie, the reluctant men’s 10,000-meter champion, extended his world title streak to three with a winning time of 27:24.58, best in the event this year. Gebrselassie had threatened not to race in Athens after complaining about the hard running surface, similar to the track in Atlanta, which left Gebrselassie with severe foot blisters after winning the Olympic 10,000-meter gold medal and prevented him from competing at 5,000 meters.

“I never say, ‘I’m not competing in Athens,’ ” Gebrselassie said. “It was just, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ One week ago, I decide to come.” And how were his feet, post-race, this time? “I still had a little problem, but not like Atlanta. This was an easy one.” Silver and bronze medalists were Kenya’s Paul Tergat (27.25.62) and Morocco’s Salah Hissou (27:28.67). . . .

With Dan O’Brien bypassing Athens because of a shin injury, the decathlon world’s championship changed hands for the first time since 1991. Tomas Dvorak of the Czech Republic, bronze medalist in Atlanta, set a World Championship record of 8,837 points, eclipsing O’Brien’s old mark of 8,817. Finland’s Eduard Hamalainen (8,730) took the silver and Germany’s Frank Busemann (8,652) the bronze. Steve Fritz of the United States duplicated his fourth-place finish in Atlanta with 8,463 points. American teammate Chris Huffins, first after seven events, failed to mark in the ninth event, the javelin, and did not finish.