Lord Coe reckons Mo Farah will be 'Britain's greatest athlete ever' with 5000m gold at Moscow

Former track and field athlete Sebastian Coe has said that Mo Farah could become Britain's greatest athlete ever if he becomes a three-time world champion in the next 24 hours, as the athlete begins defence of his world 5000m title.

According to the Mirror, although Lord Coe, a double Olympic gold medallist with a strong claim to the title himself, has always given his vote to decathlon legend Daley Thompson, he concedes that Farah could move into a class of his own.

Coe said that Farah is in special form at the moment where everyone else in the field, whether they would admit it or not, were running for second place, adding that he was in that kind of form in 1980-81.

Only Kenenisa Bekele, the three-time Olympic and five-time world champion, has held all four long-distance titles at the same time and Farah is 12-and-a-half laps from emulating the Ethiopian star, the report said.