Jakob Ingebrigtsen in action at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22 (© Getty Images)
Looking back at footage of the men’s 1500m final at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22, it is difficult to detect that Jakob Ingebrigtsen was anything other than his customary commanding self until the final 40 metres.
The Norwegian prince of middle distance raised his index finger when he was introduced to the crowd on the start line and looked like the number one contender as he controlled the race from the front, even with defending champion Samuel Tefera in tow.
Only as Ingebrigtsen rounded the final bend did the golden boy start to appear off colour in the blue national bodysuit that, nine months on, he has generously donated to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA). The bodysuit, along with the Belgrade22 name bib, will be on display for five months at the MOWA-Heritage Exhibition in Budapest, Hungary, ahead of next year’s World Athletics Championships.
Ultimately, Ingebrigtsen had to settle for the silver medal as Tefera swept past him and on to victory in 3:33.77, eclipsing the 23-year-old championship record held by fellow-Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie. The following day, after returning home, the runner-up tested positive for Covid.
He had clearly been below par in Belgrade. Four weeks earlier, Ingebrigtsen had taken 0.44 off Tefera’s three-year-old world record with a 3:30.60 clocking in Lievin - the first sub 3:31 indoor 1500m in history.
It proved to be the first of two painful defeats in 2022 for the young man who claimed Olympic 1500m gold as a 20-year-old in Tokyo in 2021. Outdoors, at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22, Ingebrigtsen found himself on the suffering end of Jake Wightman’s razor-sharp tactics in the 1500m final.
Highly productive year of progress
Ingebrigtsen proceeded to show his own true class, dispatching the opposition to bag his first world title in the 5000m final in Eugene, then completing a second successive 1500m-5000m double at the European Championships in Munich, and taking the Wanda Diamond League 1500m Trophy in Zurich in 3:29.05, the fastest time in the world in 2022.
A world outdoor title, a world indoor record, a world lead, and five major medals in all added up to another highly productive year of progress for the former teenage prodigy.
Three months on from his 22nd birthday, perhaps it is a blessing disguised in the immediate disappointment of silver that Ingebrigtsen still has the targets of world outdoor and indoor 1500m gold at which to aim in his still-fledgling senior career.
After being named joint European Men’s athlete of the year with his good friend Armand Duplantis in October, he confessed: “With the 1500m being my main event, I'm not satisfied with two silver medals. I would love to become a world champion in my event.”
The Olympic 1500m champion will get the chance to bring his Midas touch to bear on that ambition at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 2023, which run from 19-27 August – and at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March 2024.
In the meantime, the watching world has the opportunity to catch its breath and appreciate just what the youngest of the Ingebrigtsen running clan has achieved in his tender years.
In medal terms, Jakob has collected Olympic and world outdoor gold, world outdoor and indoor silver, four European track golds outdoors, three indoors and one over the country.
Measured by the clock, he is the fastest European of all-time at 1500m, 2000m and 5000m outdoors, and at 1500m indoors. He is one of only two men to have run a sub-3:30 1500m, sub-7:30 3000m and sub 12:50 5000m, together with Daniel Komen.
'More than what was reasonable, or realistic'
Born on 19 September 2000, six days before Haile Gebrselassie’s epic 10,000m tussle with Paul Tergat at the Sydney Olympics, Ingebrigtsen was long destined to follow in the footsteps of his elder brothers.
Henrik, 31, won the European 1500m title in 2012. Filip, 29, won in in 2016, with Henrik in third place. Filip also took world outdoor bronze at 1500m in London in 2017, behind Kenyans Elijah Manangoi and Timothy Cheruiyot. Jakob succeeded Filip as European 1500m champion in 2018 and kept the title in the family in 2022.
All three brothers were coached in their hometown, Sandnes, by their father Gjert. Since the start of 2022, Jakob has been guided by Henrik.
“I think the most important thing I have learned from my brothers is the mentality of Henrik,” Jakob reflected. “He always went out hard and just believed in himself more than what was reasonable, or realistic.
“If that’s your mindset, it also makes you set goals that are difficult to achieve. I believe that’s the way to go if you want to be the best. You need to go out hard, set yourself tough goals and do what you can to achieve them.”
Jakob was only 16 when he made his major championship debut, running in the heats of the 3000m steeplechase at the World Championships in London in 2017. That summer he claimed European Under 20 titles in the 5000m and the 3000m steeplechase and became the youngest ever sub four minute miler, clocking 3:58.07 at the Diamond League meeting in Eugene and improving to 3:56.29 on home ground at the Bislett Games in Oslo.
Historic double
The following year, 2018, he completed his first European 1500m-5000m double – the first in history – at the age of 17. Henrik finished fourth in the 1500m final and runner up in the 5000m. It was a stunning double accomplished with a tactical acumen and racing maturity way beyond his tender years.
Jakob’s 1500m success came at the age of 17 years 324 days, making him the second youngest ever individual senior European track and field champion in history after Mari Cruz Diaz of Spain, winner of the 10km race walk in 1986 aged 16 years 306 days. Valeriy Borzov and Carolina Kluft were 19 when they won their first European titles.
At global level, even as a teenager of such prodigious talent, Jakob could not quite get the better of his peers at global level. In the 1500m final at the 2018 World Under 20 Championships in Tampere, he finished 0.18 down on Kenya’s George Manangoi in the silver medal position – with Tefera back in fifth place. He also finished third in the 5000m final, snatching bronze ahead of the future Olympic 10,000m and world indoor 3000m champion Selemon Barega of Ethiopia.
After taking 1500m silver and 3000m gold at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow early in 2019, Ingebrigtsen lined up a double medal shot at that year’s World Athletics Championships in Doha. Still a teenager, he made the 5000m final with Henrik and Filip and went for broke down the back-straight on the final lap – only to fade to fifth in the homestretch.
He got closer to the podium in the 1500m, but still fell frustratingly short of a medal, finishing fourth behind Cheruiyot, Algerian Taoufik Makhloufi and Poland’s Marcin Lewandowski.
It was in the post-pandemic outdoor season of 2021, his first as a fully-fledged senior, that the 20-year-old Ingebrigtsen finally conquered the track world.
Two months after smashing the European 5000m record with a stunning 12:48.45 victory at the Florence Diamond League meeting, he decided to concentrate solely on the 1500m at the delayed Tokyo Olympic Games, despite a career record of no wins in 12 races against the formidable Cheruiyot.
When it came to the final, the Kenyan blasted through the first 200m in 27.8 and 400m in 56.2. At 600m, he was 0.3 clear of Ingebrigtsen in 1:24.0. That’s how it stayed until the final 200m, when the Norwegian moved into overdrive, overtaking Cheruiyot off the final bend to past to win in 3:38.32, an Olympic and European record.
Out of Africa for the first time in 30 years
His second senior global success, the 2022 world 5000m final in Eugene, was an equally momentous affair.
Against a stellar field, which included Ugandan world record holder Jacob Cheptegei, Ingebrigtsen controlled the race from the front – repelling the challenges of the contenders stacked behind him before pulling clear in the home straight. It was the first success at the distance at the World Championships or Olympics by a male athlete born outside of Africa since Dieter Baumann’s victory at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
“This is already my third World Championships and my fifth attempt to become a world champion,” said Ingebrigtsen, “so it’s amazing to win this gold and finally become a world champion.”
One suspects it will not be his last.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
