Why Hamilton marathoner Reid Coolsaet says Moh Ahmed's Olympic race was 'craziest 10k' he's ever seen

In what might be one of the greatest Canadian performances at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Mohammed Ahmed finished fourth — one of 13 men in the 10,000 metre race on Aug. 2 to break an Olympic record that lasted 16 years.

The 33-year-old from St. Catharines, Ont., finished in 26 minutes 43.79 seconds, holding a top-two position with a few laps left.

He fell behind in the final stretch to miss out on his first-ever podium finish in the race at an Olympics or world championship.

"Honestly I have no regrets. I think I ran that really, really f—ing well," he told CBC Sports' Devin Heroux after the race. 

Marley Dickinson, an athletics journalist with Canadian Running, told CBC Sports that "it was probably the greatest Olympic 10K we'll see for a long time."

It also impressed Hamilton marathoner Reid Coolsaet, who competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

Coolsaet described the race as "the craziest 10k I've ever seen."

Uganda's Joshua Cheptegei claimed gold in 26 minutes 43.14 seconds. Ethiopia's Berihu Aregawi scored silver in 26:43.44 seconds and American Grant Fisher earned bronze at 26:43.46 — just 13 hundredths of a second ahead of Ahmed.

On Wednesday, Coolsaet spoke with CBC Metro Morning's Molly Thomas about why that race was special.

Here's an edited and abridged version of that interview. Listen to the full audio interview at the link below.

Listen | 'It was just super, super fast and close:' Hamilton marathoner and Olympian breaks down the 10,000 metre race at the Paris Olympics

Metro Morning6:29Olympic marathoner breaks down the psychology of elite-level long distance running

Reid Coolsaet is a marathoner who competed in the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. 

Q: What made that 10,000 metre final so exhilarating to watch?

You usually don't get that many competitors at the end of a 10K together when the pace is so fast from the beginning. You often have a very fast-paced race where it gets spread out or a tactical race like we saw this morning in the 5,000 metres where there's a lot of athletes bunched together in the end. And that's what causes, you know, the chaos and potentials for tripping up and stuff like that. But the 10,000 meters that we saw earlier where Moh got fourth was a very fast race, but there were still many, many competitors at the end where I think there was seven men within two seconds... So, it was just super, super fast and close.

You talked about the bunching of the runners. When do you choose to bunch? Can you bunch right off the hop? It seems like people wait a little while.

In the distance races there's no lanes. Once the gun goes off, you can go wherever you want to go. Now you shouldn't be tripping people up and whatnot, but everybody wants to be on the rail because the rail will be the shortest distance. So, if you're running a race like a 5,000 meters or 10,000... you'll run quite a bit more distance if you're not on the rail. So, everybody kind of wants to be in the same position. They also want to be towards the front. You know, whether it's a final and you want to be in the top three.

I also see people staying behind and then making a move maybe mid-race or later on. What's the strategy in that?

So if you're really good, like a Jakob Ingebrigtsen, he will just hang out at the very back and not worry about getting tripped up, not worry about fighting for that space on the rail. He just will go right to the back. Stay on the rail. Stay out of trouble. And then when he thinks it's time to move up to the front, he'll, he'll take about a lap and move up towards the front and, and make sure he's in the top eight to get through. And we saw in the first heat as well, from Gebrhiwet, from Ethiopia, he stayed in the back for many, many laps before, you know, he eventually made his way through towards the front.

How do you train as an athlete for something like this? 

Recovery in between all these races is going to be very important. You wouldn't see any of these athletes in the 5,000 or 10,000 at the Olympics taking in anything during the race. Sometimes on a very hot 10K you might grab a cup of water. But everything's being done before and after the races and you're fuelling up. All these men and women have it down. They know exactly when to eat their last morsel of food before the gun goes off. So, they don't feel like they have too much in their stomach, but also they feel like they have enough energy to power them through.

What are you eating?

Well, that's very individual ... If you were to go to a Canadian road race, people would have a banana and a bagel a couple hours before. So you're just trying to get carbs. You don't need protein so much right before a race, nor fibre. So, you're really just sticking with the very simple carbs.

How much of this is psychological in a race like the 10,000 metres?

At this level that makes the difference. All these men and women are very, very well trained and they can all run fast. But whether they get the most out of their own abilities depends on how clear and how calm their mind is ... if you can dig deep, you can get the most out of yourself on race day.