Landmark defeat for Haile

BBC Sport's Steve Cram explains why Haile Gebrselassie's defeat in the 10,000m marks the end of an era.

The men's 10,000m was a quite brilliant race. It had absolutely everything a distance battle should have: tactics; a historical rivalry between two great running nations; and unbelievable tension.

And of course we saw something we've never seen before - Haile Gebrselassie getting beaten.

I guess we must look at this as some sort of benchmark for exactly that reason.

In some ways, it makes you feel slightly sad to see one of the all-time greats finally lose his crown. What we saw here was how hard it is to come back from injury as you get older.

Haile had an Achilles operation after the Sydney Olympics and it showed. He may have been able to put the miles in during training but there is simply no substitute for racing.

The Kenyans will be celebrating big-time after this

  Steve Cram

He hasn't been able to run in a competitive situation since his gold medal last summer, and he simply couldn't sprint away from the field at 200m as he normally does.

New champion Charles Kamathi is a tremendous new talent. He looked wonderfully relaxed all the way round, and has done so whenever we've seen him.

His run in Brussels should have given us some sort of indication that he was capable of producing a display like this, but, when you have a figure of the stature of Haile around, it's sometimes difficult to see how anyone else could possibly win.

To run 24.7 seconds for the last 200m would be a good performance by itself.

To do it at the end of a World Championship 10,000m final is phenomenal. The Kenyans will be celebrating big-time after this.

They've wanted to dethrone Haile for so long. Paul Tergat came close on a number of occasions, but now they've finally done it in the shape of a 23-year-old.

Haile had to settle for third at Edmonton

It vindicates the changes they've made to their training approach in recent months.

You seldom see the Ethiopians chasing races on the European circuit in the summer, and the Kenyans have learnt from that.

They now take their top athletes into training camps in their own country, keep them fresh and save them for the really big races.

To try to get Haile's defeat into perspective, think about the way that his Ethiopian team-mate Assefa Mezgebu reacted when Kamathi first went away on the top bend.

It was almost as if he looked across at the old champion and thought, is it okay if I chase him? Are you not going to chase him down yourself?

By the time he realised that it might actually be down to him, it was too late.

And even when Mezgebu crossed the line for silver he still had a look of disbelief on his face. It was truly a great race.