Yahoo Finance This runner stumbled twice during the men’s 10,000m final, but still managed to finish
Australian athlete Patrick Tiernan offered runners everywhere a lesson in perseverance last week, after he stumbled towards the end of the men’s 10,000m final at the Tokyo Olympics.
Around 200 metres from the finish line in last Friday’s race, Tiernan hit the wall. He had kept pace with the leaders until eventual winner Selemon Barega forced a breakaway as the runners approached the final lap. Out of shot, Tiernan stumbled. By the time he entered the home straight, he was clearly in distress, stumbling from foot to foot before eventually crashing to the track’s floor for a second time.
But the Australian picked himself up, and managed to finish the race in 19th. 'It’s the Olympics and I’ve been waiting for five years for it,' he said afterwards, according to the Australian Associated Press. ‘It was about 180 to go that I collapsed the first time. You don’t stop when you’ve got 180 metres to go.'
'I didn’t think I was completely done at that point, so I got up,' he said. 'It happened again and I knew I was in trouble. I was so close that you have to will yourself across the line and finish that race. I knew it was something I could do and also needed to do.'
All was going to plan until the last 600 metres of the race when he ran out of steam, Tiernan said. The hot conditions certainly played a part in the disappointing result, despite undergoing serious heat and humidity training over the last three months. But amazingly Tiernan still finished with a season’s best of 28:35.06.
Responding to social media praise from fellow Australians, Tiernan told the Australian Associated Press that he wasn’t proud of the result. He said, 'It doesn’t feel anything heroic to me. I just fell a little short of where I wanted to be and haven’t had a chance to process any of that.'
But he also thanked those who had sent messages of support in an Instagram post. 'It can be a brutal and lonely sport long distance running, but I can guarantee you that the latter has not been the case for me,' he wrote. 'All of the kind messages of love and support have been so appreciated, and have definitely not gone unnoticed.'
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