Olympics Farah 1000m athletics

Story highlights

Farah wins the 5000 meters final in a time of 13 minutes 41.66 seconds

He is one of only six men to win double Olympic gold at 5000m and 10000m

He moved to Britain at eight years old after being born and brought up in Somalia

His wife is due to give birth to twin girls later this month and he has dedicated the golds to them

CNN  — 

Mo Farah has joined an illustrious list of athletes who have won 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter Olympic gold medals by beating off a late challenge to win the shorter distance race in front of a roaring home crowd.

The 29 year-old runner stepped up the pace 600 meters from the end, but then faced an impressive chase down from Ethiopian Dejen Gebremeskel and Kenya’s Thomas Longosiwa in the home strait. But he held on to cross the line in 13 minutes 41.66 seconds.

“I’m just amazed - two gold medals, who would have thought that? I got a lot of support from a fantastic crowd and that helped me towards the end” Farah told BBC TV after the race.

His wife is set to give birth to twins anytime soon and he dedicated both victories to them, saying “they can have one each”.

As is typical in his races, the pace set at the start of the race was fairly slow, with U.S. athlete Lopez Lomong leading with a lap time of 1 min 11 seconds.

The Ethopian duo of Gebremeskel and Yenew Alamirew then lengthened their strides to pick up the pace, but encouragement came from Farah’s American training partner Galen Rupp who helped keep Farah in contention by meeting the Ethiopian’s pace.

Rupp could not stay with the pack on the final lap and Farah was left to fight his way into the lead and try to hold on, despite tiring heavily in the last couple of meters.

The victory comes a week after he took the 10,000m title and the crowd responded to his achievement by chanting his name as he went on a lap of honor which was more pedestrian in pace only because of the number of people that wanted to congratulate him.

He is the first British athlete to win both races at the games and only five other men have managed to do the double, Czech Emil Zatopek, Lasse Viren and Hannes Kolehmainen from Finland and Ethiopians Miruts Yifter and Kenenisa Bekele.

Farah moved to Great Britain as an eight-year-old from war-torn Somalia where he was born. He lives close to the Olympic Stadium in London, but he moved out to the U.S. last year to enhance his preparations for these games by training with Rupp.