Paul Tergat

Tergat spent the late 1990s finishing just behind Gebrselassie on the track, most painfully by nine hundredths of a second in the Sydney 2000 10,000m final, despite setting a 10,000m world record of his own in 1997. On the roads that strength-based, relentless rhythm, honed by five straight world cross-country titles, finally won out: two world half-marathon titles, a marathon world record of 2:04:55 in Berlin in 2003 and New York in 2005.