Moroccan Sofiane Bekkali won the men's 3,000m steeplechase gold medal in the athletics competitions at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on Monday.
El-Baqali ended the dominance of the Kenyan runners and won it in 8 minutes 8.90 seconds.
Al-Baqali won the biggest prize in his career, as he had won silver and bronze in the last two editions of the World Championships in Athletics.
Urgent Moroccan 🇲🇦 Sofiane El Bakkali wins gold 🥇 3000m steeplechase at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics #Tokyo2020 |
#Tokyo_Olympics#Tokyo2020 |
#TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/6oZeQE6F65
— beIN SPORTS (@beINSPORTS) August 2, 2021
Ethiopia's Lamesha Girma won the silver in 8 minutes 10.38 seconds, and Kenya's Benjamin Kegen won the bronze in 8 minutes 11.45 seconds.
Kenya has won the last nine golds in the 3,000m steeplechase, from 1984 to Rio 2016. In fact, it has won sprint titles in all the Olympics it has competed in since 1968 after boycotting the 1976 and 1980 editions.
With this gold, the number of golds won by Arabs - so far - in the Japanese Olympics has increased to 4 gold medals, two of them for Qatar and one for Tunisia.