• September 4 down the years

Gold at last for Farah

2011
Mo Farah became the first British man to win a world long distance title after outsprinting his rivals to claim gold in the men's 5000m at the World Athletics Championships in South Korea. Having been agonisingly pipped to gold in the 10,000m earlier in week, Farah produced a blistering final lap to hold off his rivals and cross the line in 13 minutes 23.36 seconds ahead of Bernard Lagat and Imane Merga, who was later disqualified for running inside his lane, with Ethiopian team-mate Dejene Gebremeskel bumped up to bronze.

1972
The twin impostors were out in force today. Triumph and disaster for two American swimmers at the Olympic Games.

Mark Spitz had already won six gold medals here in Munich, breaking the record set by an Italian fencer 60 years earlier (August 26). For an American swimming a medley relay race, gold number seven was a shoo-in. Although the great East German Roland Matthes set his ninth world record in the opening backstroke leg, the rest of the team couldn't hold on. Spitz swam the butterfly leg as the USA finished nearly four seconds clear of East Germany in 3:48.16. Spitz won three of his gold medals in relays and all seven in world-record times. His total of seven wasn't broken until 2008, and even then by only a hundredth of a second (August 16).

That same minimal margin applied three days earlier, when 16-year-old Rick DeMont had swum a perfectly race in the final of the 400 metres freestyle. Showing great nerve by not chasing the early leaders, he was last after 100 metres and sixth after 200, but then came through to take the gold medal in a fraction outside four minutes and inches short of the world record. He couldn't have paced himself any better, beating Australia's Brad Cooper by 0.01 of a second. But today DeMont was told that he'd failed a drugs test. He was banned from the final of the 1500 metres, and his gold in the 400 went to Cooper. It wasn't the kid's fault. He'd been taking medication for asthma since he was four.

The night before the 400 metres heats, he'd woken up wheezing and taken one of his usual tablets, unaware that it contained the banned stimulant ephedrine (the American medical team hadn't consulted the IOC's list of banned substances). When it was too late, one of them phoned DeMont's own chemist in California to ask what his medication contained! It gets worse. The IOC medical commission agreed to let DeMont keep his gold medal if the US doctors would accept partial responsibility. Shamefully, they refused. The following year, DeMont won the 400 metres at the inaugural World Championships, setting a world record while beating Cooper into second place again. But his own people cost him Olympic gold.

In Munich's athletics stadium, Valery Borzov completed the sprint double. After his easy but slightly unsatisfactory victory in the 100 metres, he did even better in the 200. Borzov was a great competitor at 100 metres (golds at three European Championships), but he never ran really fast times over that distance. The 200 metres was something else. Although he didn't concentrate on it as much, he was one of the best of all time. In today's Olympic final, he didn't take the lead until the finishing straight, but then his economical style took over. Short quick strides like Jesse Owens, hands in the 'paper-cutter' position. He accelerated away to win by two yards, which would have been even more if he hadn't started celebrating with five yards to go. Throwing his arms high above his head may have cost him a shot at the world record of 19.83 seconds set at altitude in the previous Olympics. As it was, he ran exactly 20.00, easily the fastest at sea level until then. No-one broke the 20-second barrier at sea level until 1980. But Borzov should have.

2006
The day Naseem Hamed left jail. The former featherweight boxing champion had been convicted after 'showing his car off' when he drove at 90 mph on the wrong side of a carriageway. The crash left another driver with fractures to most of his major bones. Hamed served 16 weeks of a 15-month sentence.

1981
Neil Adams became the first British man to win a world title in judo. In the light-middleweight final in Maastricht, he gained the full ten points against Jiro Kase of Japan, holding him down to finish the fight in just over three minutes.

1991
Silky attacking full-back Serge Blanco scored his last try in international rugby union, ten years after his first. This was his 38th, still the record for France, who scored two others in a 22-9 win over Wales in Cardiff. Later that year, Blanco won the last of his 93 caps in a World Cup match against England.

1921
In Brescia, only three drivers finished the first Italian Grand Prix. All three were French, headed by Jules Goux and Jean Chassagne in Ballots, followed by Louis Wagner's Fiat. An Italian did set the fastest lap: Pietro Bordino in another Fiat. Goux's average speed was very nearly 90 miles per hour, immediately establishing this Grand Prix as the fastest on the schedule.

Six years later to the day, the same race was the first with an average winning speed of over 100 mph. This time it was held at Monza, and again it was won by a Frenchman: Robert Benoist, who'd won that year's French and Spanish Grands Prix in his Delage. The Italian Grand Prix later became the first with an average winning speed of 150 mph.

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