He has had an intense rivalry
with his friend Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia. In the Olympic Games 10,000m
finals of both 1996 Atlanta Olympics and 2000 Sydney Olympics, he was defeated
by Gebrselassie by slim margins. In 2000, the margin of victory was only nine
hundredths of a second. Tergat finished
second to Gebrselassie in the 1997 and 1999 World Championships in Athletics at
10,000 m, and finished third in the 1995 version of that race, behind
Gebrselassie and Moroccan Khalid Skah.
On the track, Tergat broke
Gebrselassie's 10,000 meter world record on August 22, 1997 in Brussels with a
time 26:27.85 minutes. The record was broken again by Gebrselassie in 1998 (time
26:22.75), but Tergat's time remains a Kenyan record (as of 2009). On the road,
Tergat broke the half marathon world record on April 4, 1998 in Milan by
running in 59:17 minutes. The previous record, 59:47 minutes was set by Moses
Tanui in 1993. Tergat's world record was broken in 2005 by Samuel Wanjiru,
another Kenyan.
When Tergat raced Gebrselassie in
the London Marathon in 2002, it was Tergat who beat Gebrselassie; Tergat was in
second place behind then world record holder Khalid Khannouchi. The three
runners raced again in the 2007 version with Tergat being the only one of them
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