Farah impresses at double the distance

Mo Farah doubled his usual distance to finish third in atrocious conditions in the inaugural Bupa London 10,000 metres road race yesterday.

His training partner, the Kenyan Micah Kogo, the UK all-comers' 10km record holder, fought a close battle with world road champion, Zersenay Tadese, before powering ahead of the Eritrean to win by seven seconds in a time of 28min 8sec.

Farah clocked 28.39 with wind and rain hampering the field. He is just back from a two-month training spell at altitude in the United States where the highlight was running the fastest track 10,000m by a British athlete for eight years, 27.44 in Stanford.

Farah, 25, the European 5,000m silver medallist, will now sit down with his advisors to hammer out his summer's track schedule in the final build-up to the Olympic Games. "My coach [Alan Storey] and manager [Ricky Simms] will help work on that," he said.

In the women's race, Irina Mikitenko, winner of last month's London Marathon, returned to the capital to score another victory in 32.2.

The German dominated after breaking away from Britain's Mara Yamauchi for a comfortable win, with the Hungarian Aniko Kalovics taking third. Yamauchi's team-mates Liz Yelling and Hayley Haining finished fourth and sixth respectively.

Mikitenko had a good track career before switching to the marathon and just three weeks after her London win ran 31:57 to win the German 10,000m track title.