Britain’s Laura Muir emerges from 1500m slugfest with world bronze

Moments after a world 1500m final so brutal it could have carried an 18 certificate, Laura Muir flopped to the track, closed her eyes and began swallowing vast gulps of oxygen. She was still on the floor five minutes later – longer than the race itself – waiting for the fire in her lungs and legs to extinguish, when a kindly official slipped a bronze medal around her neck. Then she began to smile.

The toughest race of her life, she called it. But in truth it was less a race, more of a slugfest between three of the greatest female middle distance runners in history. There was no room for in-race subtleties, or tactical niceties. Instead it became an all-out war from tape to gun: the 1500m equivalent of Marvin Hagler v Tommy Hearns with Ken Buchanan also wading in.

The pace was so extraordinarily high from the start that after 800m there were only three women left chasing a medal: the double world champion Faith Kipyegon, the world indoor champion Gudaf Tsegay and Muir. Everyone else’s dreams had been blasted to smithereens.

The three legends continued to scrap it out until Kipyegon broke her rivals’ spirit with 200m to go, to quadruple-plate her greatness with a fourth global title. The Kenyan’s time, 3.52:96, was as breathtaking as the race itself.

Tsegay held on to take silver in 3.54:52, with Muir third in 3.55:28 – her second fastest time ever. Astonishingly the fourth-placed finisher, Hirut Meshesha, was six seconds and about 40 metres back. “Everything hurt,” Muir said afterwards. “The last 100m my legs were just on fire. I felt like I couldn’t lift them, I was running in treacle. Everything was burning. Even walking around afterwards, Faith [and I] we were like ‘We are not OK, this is not good, everything