HE has won multiple world and Olympic gold medals, but Mo Farah claims yesterday’s victory in the Bupa Great North Run felt as good as anything he has achieved in his career.

Farah became the first British men’s winner of the world’s most prestigious half-marathon for 29 years when he held off a sprint finish from his training partner, Mike Kigen, to triumph by half-a-second on the South Shields seafront.

The result, which saw Farah fail to break the one-hour barrier by a tantalising second, was a stark reversal of 12 months earlier when he had lost out in a thrilling sprint finish to Kenenisa Bekele.

His triumph looked in doubt when Kigen repeatedly edged ahead in the second half of the race, but his superior finishing speed proved decisive as he sprinted clear with 200m remaining and held on to win by half-a-yard.

“We hadn’t had a British winner since 1985, so it was great to be able to change that and change the history of the race,” said Farah, who joins Steve Kenyon and Mike McLeod on the list of British male winners of the Great North Run. “It would have been nice to have got under 60 minutes, but it was always going to be winning the race that was the most important thing.

“I had a chat with Alberto (Salazar), my coach, and the aim was always going to be to win the race. A fast time was a bonus, but it was the winning that was the most important thing. Give credit to Mike because if it wasn’t for him, neither of us would have been able to run that fast.

“I learned a lot from last year, and at one point when Mike was talking to me and saying, ‘Let’s go’, I wanted to make sure I had something left at the end. I didn’t want to be in the same position I was in last year. I needed to make sure I had that little bit more.

“It’s amazing to get the win. It was a very strong field, with an Olympic champion in there and so many good runners. There were a lot of people who are capable of winning big things, so to come away with the win is a big thing for me.”

The victory ensures a successful end to what has been a difficult season for Farah, with an illness forcing his withdrawal from the Commonwealth Games and an infected tooth resulting in a collapse that saw him airlifted to hospital in August.

He returned to win both the 5,000m and 10,000m titles at the European Championships in Zurich, and after breaking the British two-mile record at the Sainsbury’s Grand Prix, yesterday’s triumph completed a notable hat-trick that sets him up nicely for his winter programme.

“It’s been a tough year and I’ve struggled at times,” said Farah. “So to have turned it around like I have is incredible. To win the two gold medals at the Europeans, come back a week later to set a British record and then win here in another British record is fantastic.

“If you’d asked me six weeks ago if I would have been happy with any of that, I would have chosen just one or two and been satisfied. I couldn’t have imagined doing all of it.”

Farah trains with Kigen at both his British base at Teddington and his training camp in Kenya, and freely admits the pair worked in tandem during the first half of yesterday’s race to pick off their rivals in the field.

There were times when Kigen looked to be pulling clear, only for Farah to reel him back in, but the British number one denies that the pair had already agreed on the final result before heading across the Tyne Bridge.

“Our aim was to work together and try to get rid of as many athletes as we could,” he said. “We knew that if we ran at a comfortable pace and worked together, we could be effective. He was feeling stronger at certain periods, and if I hadn’t have believed in myself, I wouldn’t have beaten him. My aim was to make sure the gap never got that big, but he certainly wasn’t slowing.”

The only minor frustration for Farah was his failure to break the one-hour barrier, but with any plans to return to full marathon distance having been shelved ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the double champion from London 2012 has pledged to return to Tyneside next September to run even faster.

“It was a bit annoying (to finish in 1:00.01),” he said. “Mike had a watch on so he knew fairly early on that we were going to be close, but I didn’t know that until the end. I want to go faster, but I knew I had to conserve a bit of energy to be able to win the race.

“It would have been nice to have gone under, but maybe that’s the target for next year – to go under 60 minutes then.”