World Athletics Championships Oregon22 - Day Ten (© Getty Images)
The duel between Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Joshua Cheptegei could make the long distance events trendy again. The Norwegian and Ugandan world stars will not want to settle for a single world title in Budapest between 19 and 27 August 2023, and we, spectators can be very happy about that!
It is very rare when two world class athletes are at the peak of their careers in the same event at the same time. This is the case today with Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Joshua Cheptegei. The two runners have different styles: while the Norwegian approaches the 5000m from a 1500m perspective, the Ugandan is not bothered by the half marathon distance as well.
The star family in the world of athletics that has been the most talked about in recent years is the Norwegian Ingebrigtsen family, where three of the seven brothers, Henrik, Filip and Jakob, have had outstanding results. When the older boys had asked him to write a training plan for them a few years ago, their father, Gjert Ingebrigtsen, became their coach without qualifications.
As time went on, he got more and more involved in coaching and demanded more and more from his children. Gjert's coaching philosophy was that the drivers of success were a gradual build-up of workload years after years, increasingly hard training, constant monitoring of training and a supportive family environment.
The first successes were achieved by Henrik, now 31 years old (European Champion in 2012, Norwegian 1500m record), who was followed by Filip (European 1500m gold medal in 2016) and then Jakob.
For a long time, it looked as if the 2018 European Championships in Berlin would be all about Filip, as he had already set the Norwegian 1500m record a month before the continental event. However, he fell in the semi-finals and the consequences lasted in the final too. Yet, in the final, we saw something we had never seen before: with two laps to go, the three brothers moved from the back of the field to the front with a change of pace and were in podium position for a lap.
The three of them also took part in Eliud Kipchoge's two-hour marathon attempt, where they helped the legend as pace runners to run 1:59:40 over the 42,195m distance in the Prater in Vienna. Returning to Berlin, Jakob led the last two laps, a month before his 18th birthday, to accomplish what for many would have been the highlight of his career, but for him was just the beginning.
The gold medal in the 1500m was repeated a day later in the 5000m, and the silver medal went to Henrik. Since then, Jakob's records have been growing every year. At the Tokyo Olympics, postponed to 2021, he beat Kenya's Timothy Cheruiyot in the 1500m to reach the top of the world rankings before his 21st birthday. He did so in a new Olympic record of 3:28.32, still the European record for the event.
Earlier this year at the World Championships in Oregon, Jake Wightman beat him in the 1500m, but a few days later he compensated his growing fan base, which is now approaching half a million on Instagram, by winning the 5000m. Cheptegei was also in the defeated field that day, finishing 9th in the 5000m finals, a very close race, less than four seconds behind gold medallist Ingebrigtsen.
The 22-year-old Ingebrigtsen completed his gold collection in three major world races at a very young age, and along Cheptegei, he had to beat another runner of his era. The two had only faced on each other in the 5,000m at the 2021 Diamond League in Italy, apart from the Oregon World Championships. The Norwegian won that duel, too, with a European record of 12:48.45, which still stands today. For Cheptegei, this will be an extra motivation for the 2023 World Championships in Budapest to finally surpass his rival.
World Athletics Championships Oregon22 - Day Ten (© Getty Images)
Uganda, with a population of 47 million, is located in the same part of the African continent as the two running superpowers Kenya and Ethiopia. Joshua Cheptege, 26, has played a key role in helping Uganda slowly catch up in the long distance. He has won the last two world championships in the 10 000m, and in between he took home the Olympic title in the 5,000m. In Tokyo, he was beaten by Ethiopia's Selemon Barega, but he was able to share the podium with his compatriot, world half-marathon champion Jacob Kiplimo, in another historic event.
Cheptegei is considered by many to experts as a talent like Hicham El Guerrouj, Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele, Mo Farah or Eliud Kipchoge. His fantastic stamina and versatility are demonstrated by the fact that he holds the world record for the 15km road race (41:05), in addition to the 5000m (12:35.26) and 10,000m (26:11.00), and was fourth in the 2020 World Half Marathon Championships.
As he becomes a more experienced runner, he, like the classics mentioned above, may be increasingly tempted by the marathon distance. But in 2023, the focus for the Ugandan may still be on the 5000m and 10,000m. Along with many other runners, the path to a double lie through the body of Ingebrigtsen, who is considering competing in the 10,000m at the World Championships in Budapest, alongside the 1,500m and 5,000m.
The Norwegian could be in for a very packed programme, with six events in nine days. In addition, the World Championships schedule on the evening of 20 August is less than an hour between the 1500m semi-finals and the 10 000m final. It would be a huge feat for Ingebrigtsen not only to take this challenge, but also to succeed against rivals with fresher legs. The Norwegian's chance could be if Cheptegei and the others engage in a slower, tactical battle.
The real battle between the two is more likely to be in the 5000m, the preliminaries of which will take place on Thursday 24 August, the day after the 1500 finals. The final of the event will take place in style on the closing night of the World Championships on 27 August.
Two epoch-making personalities whose duel could be one of the biggest stories of the entire 2023 World Championships in Budapest!
