Olympic champion Mohamed Farah admits he is already planning a golden exit strategy as he prepares to bring the curtain down on his medal-laden career.
The double London 2012 champion is 33 next month and has already revealed he will hang up his track spikes following next year’s World Championships in London and instead concentrate on marathon running.
But before that, he is determined to enshrine his impressive legacy by adding to his haul at this year’s Olympics in Rio.
The five-time World Champion — speaking after cruising to victory in the 3,000 meters at the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix — said: “It would be nice to end on a high.
“That’s one thing I’ve told myself as an athlete. Go out on the track while you are at the top.”
Farah took it easy in the opening laps at the Emirates Arena before charging away from nearest challengers Augustine Choge and Dawit Wolde with 300m to go, finishing in seven minutes 39.55 seconds.
“It’s good to win on home soil,” he said after being treated to a huge cheer by the sell-out Glaswegian crowd. “They love me here. It’s great support and that keeps me going every day. I love the Scottish people, they really get behind you.
“I got some great support from the crowd so it’s nice to be able to win.
“That was the important thing today. Early on I was hoping to get close to the British record but the race slowed down a little and there were too many guys in there to really put your foot down.
“I’ve got a big year coming up with a lot of important races so it’s important I get the wins.”
But while Farah was grinning, Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith confessed her disappointing display in Glasgow was the wake-up call she needed ahead of this year’s Olympics.
The London sprinter has high hopes as she prepares for Rio but was downcast after finishing a lowly sixth in the 60m.
World 200m champion Dafne Schippers cruised to victory in 7.10 seconds but Asher-Smith could only muster a time of 7.25 seconds — eight hundredths of a second slower than she had produced while winning her heat.
But the 20-year-old — the fastest British woman in history — believes she has time to fix her flaws with seven months to go until Rio.
She said: “It was not good. In fact it was really bad. I don’t know why it went wrong.
“But maybe that’s just what I need. If it wasn’t such a strong race, I might have got away with it but with the girls I was up against, there was no way that was happening.
“In Olympic year you can’t be making basic, technical mistakes so maybe it was a good thing it happened now. I can go away, talk to my coach and fix it.”
Asher-Smith’s Team GB colleague Sean Safo-Antwi had no such problems as he romped home in the men’s event in 6.56 seconds, with Gateshead’s Richard Kilty finishing a close second.
Home favorite Laura Muir found herself boxed in during the early stages of the women’s 800m.
She did battle her way to finish second with a personal best of two minutes 0.7 seconds but came through four strides behind Canada’s Melissa Bishop, a silver medalist at last year’s World Championships in Beijing.
However, Scottish Athlete of the Year Muir — who will be targeting the 1500m in Brazil this summer — was pleased with the result.
“You can’t do any better than a PB, so I’m delighted,” she said. “That was a world-class field. I learned a lot from the Worlds last year. That was the first time I went through three rounds and ended up finishing fifth. So I have the experience to cope with three rounds at Rio. I just want to get to that start line now and see what happens.”
London 2012 long jump champion Greg Rutherford was forced to pull out of the meet as an injury precaution earlier this week and that left it to Paralympic champion Markus Rehm to claim victory after posting a winning leap of 8.10m.
Lorraine Ugen beat British rivals Shara Proctor and Jazmin Sawyers to claim victory in the women’s event with her 6.80m effort — and with it claimed the £14,000 first prize for finishing top of the IAAF World Indoor Tour standings.
