Mo Farah needed an extra incentive ahead of his run over two miles in Birmingham on Saturday and got it last weekend when his training partner and pal Galen Rupp broke the United States record at that same distance. Rupp has been goading Farah ever since, telling him that the pressure is on. Rupp's time of 8min 09.72sec was the fastest in the world over two miles this year.
"Galen's been winding me up," Farah says through a chuckle. "He's been like 'you'd better go and do it'. All right, I might just go and do it by point-something to wind him up even more." If he does, he will break Emiel Puttemans's European record and that has stood for 39 years.
Farah will be roared round the track by his home fans, as he always is these days. Tickets for this grand prix were sold out before Christmas. Farah, along with Jessica Ennis and Holly Bleasdale, will give the patriots plenty of reason to cheer. "It gives me a real buzz," Farah said of the crowd's support. "We have a good field tomorrow, so I am not going to think that this is going to be easy. So when the crowd get louder and louder I think: 'Yeah, this is it, come on.' I try and use it in a way that makes me pumped up."
It is, as Farah says, a good lineup, including Uganda's Moses Kipsiro, who is Commonwealth champion at both 5,000 metres and 10,000m, and Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge, who took silver behind Kipsiro in the shorter of those races. "Hopefully if there is someone ahead of me and I need to close that gap, the crowd can get behind me," Farah said. "I enjoy it because I feel like I have to go and push more."
Ennis is competing in the 60m hurdles, where she will be looking to finish in something close to the 7.95sec she ran in both the heats and final at the UK trials in Sheffield last weekend. She faces Danielle Carruthers, who won silver in the World Championships in Daegu last year and has the same best time this season. After that Ennis will be competing in the long jump which, by her standards, has been the weakest of the five events she has competed in so far this season.
Ennis and Farah are long since used to all the attention they are getting but Bleasdale is still trying to adjust to finding herself keeping such august company. The organisers put her up for the pre-event press conference alongside the likes of Farah, Asafa Powell and Liu Xiang. "When they told me who I was up with I was so nervous," Bleasdale said. "Why am I appearing with them?" The answer is it is where she belongs. Bleasdale has four of the top seven heights in the pole vault this season and the 4.87m she cleared in Paris in January puts her second in the rankings overall, behind only the American Jennifer Suhr.
In Birmingham she will use a longer pole, something she avoided doing in Sheffield, and which should set her up for another attempt on beating her best of 4.87m. She says she has been clearing 4.90 in training this week. For Bleasdale this has been a breakthrough season. Other young British talents competing here, such as the sprinter Asha Philip and hurdler Andrew Pozzi, should look on and learn.
