The men's 10,000 metres was the longest of the seven men's track races in the Athletics at the 1964 Summer Olympics program in Tokyo. It was held on 14 October. 38 athletes from 23 nations entered, with 6 more not starting the event. The event was held as a single heat. The winning margin was 0.4 seconds.
Results Final World record holder Ron Clarke of Australia set the tone of the race. His tactic of surging every other lap appeared to be working. Halfway through the race, only five runners were still with Clarke: Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia, Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia, Barry Magee of New Zealand, Kokichi Tsuburaya of Japan, and Billy Mills of the United States. Magee and Tsuburaya, the local favorite, lost contact first, then Wolde. With two laps to go, only two runners were still with Clarke. On paper, it seemed to be Clarke's race. He had run a world record time of 28:15.6 while neither Gammoudi nor Mills had ever run under 29 minutes.
Mills and Clarke were running together with Gammoudi right behind as they entered the final lap. They were lapping other runners and, down the backstretch, Clarke was boxed in. He pushed Mills once, then again. Then Gammoudi pushed his way between them both and surged into the lead as they rounded the final curve. Clarke recovered and began chasing Gammoudi while Mills appeared to be too far back to be in contention. Clarke failed to catch Gammoudi, but Mills pulled out to lane 4 and sprinted past them both. His winning time of 28:24.4 was almost 50 seconds faster than he had run before and set a new Olympic record for the event. No American had ever before won the 10,000 m, nor had any come seriously close; the only Americans to win a medal at the event since Mills are Galen Rupp, who took the silver at the 2012 London Olympics, and Grant Fisher, who won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
American television viewers were able to hear the surprise and drama as NBC expert analyst Dick BankTrack & Field News • View topic – Look At . Trackandfieldnews.com (2010-06-30). Retrieved on 2011-04-18. screamed, "Look at Mills, look at Mills" over the more sedate play-by-play announcer Bud Palmer, who seemed to miss what was unfolding. (2008-04-09). Retrieved on 2011-04-18. For bringing that drama to the coverage, Bank was fired as it was considered improper at the time, although Palmer was noted as being thankful to Bank for noticing the drama.
The top four runners beat the standing Olympic record.
Place Athlete Nation Time 5000 1 Billy Mills 28:24.4 OR 14:04.6 2 Mohammed Gammoudi 28:24.8 14:07.0 3 Ron Clarke 28:25.8 14:05.0 4 Mamo Wolde 28:31.8 14:06.0 5 Leonid Ivanov 28:53.2 14:13.0 6 Kōkichi Tsuburaya 28:59.3 14:09.0 7 Murray Halberg 29:10.8 14:16.0 8 Tony Cook 29:15.8 14:11.0 9 Gerry Lindgren 29:20.6 14:12.0 10 Franc Červan 29:21.0 14:16.0 11 Siegfried Herrmann 29:27.0 14:17.0 12 Henri Clerckx 29:29.6 14:28.0 13 Jean Fayolle 29:30.8 14:27.0 14 Teruo Funai 29:33.2 14:27.0 15 Jean Vaillant 29:33.6 14:27.0 16 József Sütő 29:43.0 14:36.0 17 Josef Tomas 29:46.4 14:39.0 18 Ron Hill 29:53.0 14:27.0 19 Pal Benum 30:00.8 14:38.0 20 Siegfried Rothe 30:04.6 14:39.0 21 Michael Bullivant 30:12.0 14:28.0 22 Fergus Murray 30:22.4 14:29.0 23 Barry Magee 30:32.0 14:06.0 24 Ron Larrieu 30:42.6 14:37.0 25 Pyotr Bolotnikov 30:52.8 14:42.0 26 Bruce Kidd 30:56.4 14:43.0 27 Artur Hannemann 30:56.6 15:13.0 28 Watanabe Kazumi 31:00.6 15:12.0 29 Ranatunge Karunananda 32:21.2 16:43.0 Pascal Mfyomi DNF Naftali Temu DNF János Pintér DNF Jim Hogan DNF Muharrem Dalkılıç DNF Andrei Barabaș DNF Fernando Aguilar DNF Mohamed Hadheb Hannachi DNF Nikolay Dutov DNF
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