Track star Moh Ahmed tries to go the distance in the 10,000 metres but his late break for gold comes up short.

TOKYO—As the Olympic final of the men’s 10,000 metres wound down to its decisive laps Friday at Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, Canada’s Moh Ahmed found himself in extraordinary company.

Ahmed, at more than one point, was running shoulder to shoulder with no less a talent than Joshua Cheptegei, the Ugandan who holds the world record in both the 10,000 and the 5,000 metres. And so it says something about the enormity of Ahmed’s ambition that, with about 750 metres to go, he moved into the lead. For as long as Ahmed has been Canada’s top distance runner — and Friday’s race marked the third trip to the Games for the 30year-old from St. Catharines — he has been adamant about his end game.

“Honestly, one of the things that I’m really sick of is ‘best Canadian finish,’ ‘best Canadian this.’ I want to be the best in the world,” Ahmed said in 2017, when he first broke the national record in the 10,000.

So here he was, on the first day of the track meet at his third Olympics, going step for step with the best runner on the planet, or certainly one of them. And true to his word, Ahmed didn’t defer to the great Cheptegei. He attacked him. The move was beyond bold. On an oppressively hot and humid night at an Olympic Stadium devoid of fans, it was certainly risky.

“I think (I felt) just like everybody else. Everybody was tired. Everybody was hurting,” Ahmed said. “But you’ve got to let the adrenalin carry you.”

Indeed, if there’s a choice between (a) bold and risky and (b) boring and safe, option (a) has always been Ahmed’s play.

“It’s kind of like basketball. Everybody has a go-to move,” Ahmed said. “And you’ve got to read the race and use your tools. That’s what I was trying to do.”

In the harsh final analysis of an Olympic time sheet, Ahmed’s go-to move hit the rim like a brick. Though he led the field through much of the penultimate trip around the 400-metre oval, various rivals counter-attacked on the bell lap. And though Ahmed clearly searched for the requisite gear to stay within reach of the podium, he simply wasn’t in possession of the tools Friday.

So it was Ethiopia’s Selemon Barega whose final-lap surge won him the gold medal. It was Cheptegei, who complained after the race about a sore tendon in his ankle, who settled for silver, with fellow Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo taking bronze. Ahmed, in the end, faded to sixth — the same result he’d achieved the last time he ran the 10,000 at the 2019 world championships.

“Maybe I was little eager — got a little too eager and shot out to the front with 750 metres to go, a little too hard,” Ahmed said. “But you know, I did the best that I could.”

This was Ahmed’s third try at the longest of Olympic track races. And, for all his post-race acknowledgement of what he might have done differently, it was by far his best result. In London in 2012, as a 21-yearold from the University of Wisconsin, Ahmed wasonly the second-best Canadian in the race, finishing 18th behind countryman Cam Levins, who finished 11th.

And if Ahmed’s hopes were much higher five years ago in Rio, he learned that running shoulder to shoulder with the best in the world can be an energy-sapping experience. He likened the early part of that race to being in a “washing machine,” with the athletes throwing elbows and cutting each other off. And once he fell off the pace, in the midst of the physicality, he lost his chance. He finished last.

“I thought I was ready for it,” Ahmed said in Rio. “My legs couldn’t sustain it … I wanted to be with those guys, and I was pretty much watching the last six or seven laps.”

A lot has happened between Rio and here. In 2017, Ahmed broke Levins’ national record in the 10,000, then loudly announced he was setting his sights higher than domestic dominance. By the time he lowered the Canadian record again with that sixth at the 2019 worlds, he wasn’t quite the best on the planet, but he was getting closer. His sixthplace finish in that race might have been even better if he hadn’t spent the earlier part of that week winning a bronze medal in the 5,000, Canada’s first world championship medal at a distance event.

“It’s a learning curve,” Ahmed said in 2019. “As the body adapts and gets old, I should be able to recover better (between the two races).”

Asked if his effort in Friday’s race will hinder his performance in the 5,000, with heats Tuesday and the final on Friday, Ahmed shrugged: “Maybe. Hopefully not.”

Will Friday’s race provide more motivation in the 5,000? “I hope so,” he said.

No matter the result of the 10,000, one thing was assured: A new king of the Olympic 10K was going to be crowned. Notable in his absence Friday was Mo Farah, the Briton who won double gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 in both London in 2012 and Rio in 2016. Now 38, Farah missed the Olympic qualifying standard in the 10,000 by about 19 seconds in his final attempt in Manchester last month. Asked whether he’d be watching these Olympics, Farah was nearly brought to tears: “It’s going to be tough … But it’s the Olympics. If you can’t compete, then you’ve got to watch at home.”

Whether or not Farah was watching Friday night, Ahmed cited his late-attacking style as an inspiration for his attempt to commandeer the Olympic final with about 750 metres to go. As Ahmed pointed out: Before Farah was dominating races with such go-to moves, Farah languished through some years when he would try the same moves but fail. Which went to Ahmed’s point about basketball. As the old saying goes: Never up, never in. Nobody gets to be the best in the world being afraid to shoot their shot.

“The way that I ran the race, especially that last four or five laps, I’m not ashamed of that,” Ahmed said. “I put myself in it. I made myself a player, tried making winning moves. Unfortunately, I didn’t have too much in that last 250 (metres), maybe 300. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. These guys are the cream of the crop, the best in the world. And anytime you can compete against them, you’ve just got to be grateful for the opportunity and try to take something away from that.”