Cheruiyot Won By Slim Margin In 1989

Imagine it. Provo, Utah, for the 1989 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships: The final of the men’s 1500 meters had the billing of a heavyweight bout. It garnered so much attention that the scheduled tape-delay airing of the event by CBS had been moved from the next weekend to the next day — Sunday, 5 p.m., ET. It was the talk of the sporting world.

In one spot on the start line, was defending champion Joe Falcon of Arkansas, who came in the event having won seven career NCAA crowns between cross country, indoor track & field, and outdoor track & field.

Two other spots were occupied by Mount St. Mary’s teammates Peter Rono and Kip Cheruiyot, who starred at the 1988 Seoul Olympics the year before. Rono won the gold medal in the 1500 and Cheruiyot was seventh in that same Olympic final just eight months earlier.

The gun went off and the pace was a slog.

Falcon, in the front, on the right-hand-side of the chase pack with Rono to his left, about 300 meters into the race, around the common start/finish line, Falcon tumbled to the track — likely clipped from the back by a fellow pack-runner. He tried to overcome the stumble, but it was apparent: It was too late.

Rono and Cheruiyot were able to separate from the pack and fell in lock-step with each other. They were so much one-in-the-same that they came across the finish line in a “dead heat”. Luckily, Fully Automatic Timing (FAT) and the photo-capture technology that goes with it was able to discern a champion: It was Cheruiyot’s torso three-hundredths (0.03) of a second ahead of Rono’s as measured by the camera at the very front-leading edge of the finish line for the closest margin in the FAT era of the event until 2012.

Cheruiyot took the whole exercise of racing against his teammate and fellow Kenyan as just another day-on-the-beach: “It’s just like playing cards,” he said. “Somebody win today, somebody else tomorrow. My turn to win today. We needed to finish together.”