Nicholas Thompson: Malcolm, it’s a pleasure to be chatting with you about track again. And, wow, what a spectacular opening weekend at the World Championships.

Malcolm Gladwell: Where to begin? I know that this sentence has never been uttered in normal conversation before, but I found the men’s ten thousand metres on the opening night riveting. A hot, muggy night. Mo Farah — the greatest distance runner of his generation — up against a group of young Kenyans determined to work together to bring him down. And squarely in the mix: America’s finest distance runner, Galen Rupp. Did you ever think Farah might lose, Nick?

N: It was absolutely riveting, and I never thought that Farah was actually going to lose (though I wanted him to). I felt going into the race that there was only one way to beat him: for the Kenyans to trade the lead and try to grind him down. But he’s too good. He’s stronger than anyone who’s faster than him, and he’s faster than anyone who’s stronger than him. This race, though, did give me hope that Geoffrey Kamworor, the twenty-two-year-old Kenyan, who finished just a few strides behind, will beat Farah in the Olympics next year.

M: My God, so many things to dispute here. First of all, why all the hostility toward Farah? Here we have a sport that is slowly dying for a lack of fan interest. And along comes a charismatic, handsome, thoughtful superstar who just happens to race in the most thrilling manner possible. For those unfamiliar with Farah, last year he ran his first marathon in a time that put him comfortably among the world’s best. This year he ran fifteen hundred metres at a time that put him among the best of all time. This is a guy who could hypothetically win an Olympic medal from one to twenty-six miles — and every distance in between. This never happens. The closest analogy is if Clayton Kershaw played first base on his off days, and ended up leading the league in home runs.

N: I won’t dispute Farah’s talent, his training, his drive, his looks, his charisma, or the brilliance of the way he finishes. The guy is awesome, and dominant — and I find dominance boring. He wins every race; and, in championships, he wins every race the same way. He sits behind while his psyched-out competitors refuse to push the pace. And then he blows by them at the end. It’s for this reason that I was grateful that the race this weekend at least was different. The Kenyans pushed it and they forced him to work the whole way through. And the Kershaw analogy isn’t quite right. A more exact parallel would be if Kershaw had the best fastball, changeup, curveball, and splitter of any pitcher in the majors. And then, well, um, to press the analogy: if there were hints that he also had a coach who, maybe, just maybe, taught him how to put pine tar on the back of his glove.

M: Wait. Three minutes in and you’re already into the doping insinuations?

N: They’re hard to avoid, unfortunately, in this sport at the moment. And, to Farah’s credit, I find the questions about him far, far less worrying than the allegations against other distance runners.

M: I don’t think Farah dopes, if for no other reason than the fact that his times aren’t out of this world. The generation of distance runners that came before him — during a period when both baseball and cycling, among other sports, were beset with drug use — were running the 10K and 5K substantially faster than Mo is now. Those look suspicious in hindsight. Mo? Not so much. His claim to fame isn’t that he breaks records. It is that he is simply the greatest racer of his generation. I’ve never seen him out-thought or outfoxed on the track.

Read the article “Mo Farah, Usain Bolt, and the World Championships” on newyorker.com.