Athletics fans can look forward to seeing one of the=20 greatest milers of all time when Noureddine Morceli=20 takes part in the opening of the new athletics=20 stadium in Johannesburg
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
GROWING up in a country which was soccer crazy and had=20 little tradition in athletics it would have been hard=20 for Algeria’s Noureddine Morceli to visualise the kind=20 of life he leads today. =20
He was born in 1970 in a small fishing village 200km=20 west of Algiers and as he reached his 12th year the=20 national soccer team sent the country into raptures=20 with a historic victory over Germany in the World Cup.=20 That was also the year that the young Noureddine first=20 started running.=20
But it was not just some casual whim that saw him=20 scurrying along the beaches near his home. He was=20 inspired by his older brother Abderrahme who was the=20 country’s top 1 500m runner. He had represented Africa=20 at the first World Cup in Dusseldorf in 1977, ranking=20 seventh in the world that year, and Noureddine was=20 impressed by his exploits and the difference they had=20 made to his family’s lifestyle.=20
When Abderrahme was named as Algeria’s athlete of the=20 year the minister of sport found the family of nine=20 children a bigger house which even had electricity.=20 That showed him that athletics could provide a way out=20 and he started training on the beaches and in the=20 nearby hills. By the time he was 18 he came ninth at=20 the world junior cross country championships and won a=20 silver medal over 1 500m at the world junior=20 championships in Sudbury, Canada.=20
Morceli was perhaps fortunate to have the experience of=20 his brother and others to fall back on for it was=20 Abderrahme’s coaching and the management skills of=20 another of the country’s athletic stars from the=20 previous generation, Amar Brahmia, which helped him=20 avoid the pitfalls which could have derailed his rapid=20 rise to the top.=20
But so talented is Morceli that he would have got there=20 sooner or later, no matter what obstacles stood in his=20 path. Today he is one of the biggest drawcards in=20 athletics and can surely be considered the greatest=20 miler of all time.
That accolade, which until recently would have had=20 track and field historians arguing the merits of a=20 whole host of contenders like Herb Elliott, Peter=20 Snell, Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Said Aouita, can=20 be claimed by Morceli, not just because he holds the=20 world records for 1 500m, the mile, 2 000m and 3 000m,=20 but also because he has been consistently unbeatable=20 over a long period of time. =20
He first came to prominence in 1990 when, as a student=20 at Riverside College in California, he was beaten only=20 three times over 1 500m and topped the world rankings=20 with the fastest time of the year. Since then he has=20 gone from strength to strength and he celebrated his=20 21st birthday in style at the 1991 world indoor=20 championships in Seville with his first world record,=20 lowering the indoor mark of Peter Elliott to 3:34.16.
Later that year he won his first world title in Tokyo=20 and has now, with 1995 almost certain to follow suit,=20 headed the world rankings for six years in a row. The=20 only blemish on an otherwise spotless record is his=20 failure at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
The only year he has suffered any serious setback=20 through injury was in 1992 when he had to miss training=20 for seven weeks early in the year with a hip injury and=20 he messed up in a slow tactical race in the Olympic=20 final to finish seventh. He made amends by setting his=20 first outdoor world record later that year in Rieti=20 when he broke Aouita’s 1 500m record with a time of=20 3:28.86. This year he has been in equally scintillating=20 form after going undefeated over all distances in 1993=20 and suffering just one defeat, over 800m, in 1994. In=20 July he set a new 2 000m world record in Paris and then=20 took nearly one-and-a-half seconds off his 1 500m=20 record in Nice with a time of 3:27.37.
With a third successive world title under his belt in=20 Gothenburg last month the unstoppable Algerian heads=20 for Johannesburg in three weeks’ time with seemingly no=20 new challenges on the horizon except the stopwatch.