Battered and bruised he may have been but Mo Farah took it all in his long, loping stride as he negotiated the minefield of the 5,000 metres heats in the rain at the World Championships on Wednesday to set up one final assault on track gold.
Even with three stitches in his spiked left leg and suffering from a bruised left knee, the legacy of his turbulent 10,000 metres triumph on Friday, Britain's endurance maestro had the quality and nous to qualify easily for Saturday's final.
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While Botswana’s Isaac Makwala reached the 200 metres final against all the odds, qualifying from the notoriously difficult inside lane made even more difficult by wet conditions.
South African Wayde van Niekerk, bidding for a double after his 400 metres gold, sneaked into the final as second of the two fastest losers after edging third place in his heat from Christophe Lemaitre by two hundredths of a second.
Makwala, one of the leading contenders for a race which has been left wide open by Usain Bolt's absence, was pulled out of Monday's heats by the IAAF for medical reasons after he was struck down with a stomach virus.
Having also barred from Tuesday's 400 metres final, he was given an unexpected reprieve on Wednesday when the IAAF said he was fit to run as no longer considered an infection risk.
At the sand pit Darya Klishina led the women's long jump qualifying with a leap of 6.66 to reach the World Championships final.
Russian Klishina, competing as a neutral athlete, posted the longest jump on her second attempt.
The 26-year-old finished ninth at last year's Rio Olympics after being cleared just before the Games to be the only Russian to take part in the track and field competition following the country's ban due to widespread state-sponsored doping.
