Emile Cairess fourth in marathon in one of Britain’s best performances in Paris

Wearing an old-school Casio watch from the 1980s, Emile Cairess produced an Olympic marathon finish that has not been bettered by a Briton since that same era, exactly 40 years ago.

Having been up in second place after 30km of a grueling, hot and hilly 42.19km (26.2 miles) course, Cairess slipped back to sixth before finishing superbly in the final mile to move up to fourth.

It was not quite a medal but, considering the phenomenal strength of the African nations in endurance running and the truly global nature of the marathon, this was one of the absolute best British athletics performances at these Olympic Games.

Cairess, who went to the same Bradford school as triathlon’s Brownlee brothers, had also finished third earlier this year in the London Marathon and now wants to become the first British men’s runner to win that event since Eamonn Martin in 1993. He also hopes to emulate Charlie Spedding, also a past winner in London, who won the last British Olympic marathon medal way back at the Los Angeles Games of 1984.

“It’s always been my target but you have to give respect to stuff,” Cairess said. “Not many people win London. You could turn up in 2hr 2min shape and not win. It’s really difficult. “It’s still my goal.”

‘Running is quite simple, you just need a lot of training’

Cairess’s time here was 2hr 7min 29sec – phenomenal given the nature of the course – and within 62 seconds of the gold medal that was won by Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola.

At 26, Cairess only ran his first marathon in London last year and had prepared with training camps in Kenya and then Sestriere in the Italian Alps before special heat acclimatization using saunas and experts at Leeds Beckett University.

Cairess was wearing the super-light Adidas Adizero Adios 1 super shoes but the wider simplicity of his dedicated approach was evident in his use of an orange Casio stopwatch with none of the GPS, heart-rate, stride or VO2 information that has become the more expensive norm.

“There’s kilometer markers, you just look and then you see,” said Cairess of his watch. “I know all my courses at home – just use this. I know the pace because I see the distance and the time at the end.

“I’m pretty good at hills, I always did cross country, so I think that was one of the advantages for me in the race. I’m really proud. We were well prepared for the heat so it didn’t bother me in the race.

“I feel like I can be up there in the (marathon) majors. It’s only my third marathon, I’m still young. I’ve big goals but I just have to take everything step by step. Running is quite simple, you just need a lot of training. I run because I enjoy it.”