“And then there is Jakob. When he was around 11, he told me, ‘I want to be the best runner in the world’. He’d already worked it all out in his mind. And since that day, he’s never wavered.”
Gjert Ingebrigtsen has told this story before, more than once, never wavering in his own belief either that Jakob, the second youngest of his six sons, would someday become exactly that, the best runner in the world.
Only in telling it again, in the aftermath of this summer's Tokyo Olympics, could he also relish in the speed and style with which their ambition was fulfilled. It's one thing becoming the best runner in the world, another thing becoming it before your 21st birthday, on the biggest running stage of all.
So it came to pass that on the Saturday evening of August 7th, inside that virtually empty Olympic Stadium, the year's postponement adding to his own expectation, the gold medal in the men's 1,500 metres was won by Jakob Ingebrigtsen, aged 20 years and 11 months. The first Norwegian to win the old blue-riband event, the second youngest winner ever, it was also among the most flawlessly executed races in Olympic history.
In order to win, he first needed to turn the books on Timothy Cheruiyot, the reigning world champion from Kenya, who had beaten Ingebrigtsen in all 10 of their previous meetings before Tokyo, going back to June 2017. To do that, he'd need to run faster than ever before, which is exactly what Ingebrigtsen did, running each 400m split slightly faster, before finishing in 3:28.32, breaking the Olympic record by just over three seconds. Cheruiyot was second in 3:29.01.
Those splits – 56.14 seconds, 55.64, 55.48, with a final 400m in 54.76 – demand incredibly vast reserves of strength and speed with the mindset to match. The last time an Olympic 1,500m was won like that was in 2004, by Hicham El Guerrouj, when the Moroccan runner was a month shy of his 30th birthday.
Ingebrigtsen was deftly aware of the scale of his achievement. “This is the pinnacle,” he told us in the mixed zone afterwards, beaming, gold medal around his neck, a half-ripe banana in his hand. In truth, it may not even be his best race of 2021, at least not in terms of his record progression.
Eight weeks before Tokyo, running in Florence, Ingebrigtsen lined up in a 5,000m race that included world record holder Joshua Cheptegei from Uganda. By 3,000m, Ingebrigtsen was suddenly dropped, looked like he was out of it, only to recover as quickly again, running the last lap in 56.1 seconds to take the victory in 12:48.45, a new European record, 14 seconds faster than his previous best.
Now consider this: in the history of distance running, only one man had previously run sub-3:30 for 1,500m, sub-7:30 for 3,000m, and sub 12:50 for 5,000m, the fiercely talented runner that was Daniel Komen from Kenya, back in 1997. In matching that feat, 24 years later, Ingebrigtsen caps the evidence he is the best runner in the world right now.
Impossible . . . incredible . . . insane . . . super impressive . . . Everyone in this sport has their own words and recollections from first time they saw Jakob Ingebrigtsen run, and for me it was at the European Cross-Country in 2016, staged in Chia, in southern Sardinia. At 16, he won the junior men’s race by eight seconds, in runaway style, with three more years still to run as a junior. Turns out he won them all too.
On Sunday in Abbotstown, Ingebrigtsen will run the senior race for the first time – bypassing the Under-23 race – and unless he runs the wrong way, will add another European title to his already chest full. For the Irish crowd it's a rare chance to see the best runner in the world in person, and get some appreciation for just how incredibly good he is, because what is certain is that runners like Ingebrigtsen don't come around very often.
What is certain, too, is that his rise and consistent progression hasn’t happened by chance or accident: it’s the result of very deliberate and calculated planning by Gjert, the 55-year-old who acts as father, coach and leader, depending on the exact time of day, of what first became known as Team Ingebrigtsen.
Beginning with older brother Henrik (now 30), then Filip (now 28), Gjert built a training philosophy based largely on trial and error, where only the fittest and strongest survive. He also started without any coaching education, working instead in a wholesale company in their home town of Sandnes, south of Stavanger in southwest Norway, typically spared the snowy winters of the rural east.
It was here the young Ingebrigtsens were subjected to a heavy training load before reaching double digits, starting out in roller-skiing, training in an underground car park for an hour before school. (Two other brothers, Kisttioffer and Martin, opted out of this regime early.)
Once they turned their attention to distance running, success came early, Henrik winning a European 1,500m title in 2012, Filip winning that same title four years later. By the time he was 13, Jakob wasn’t only joining them for training runs, but at training camps too, effectively covering distances as an early teenager, twice daily, most runners wouldn’t attempt until their early 20s. At least not outside of East Africa.
Ingebrilliant . . . Ingecredible . . . Ingesane . . . By the time he was 17, Jakob was showing all three the way, winning a European double over 1,500m/5,000m in Berlin in August 2018, smooth and utterly devastating – a feat no other man, woman or child could manage in the 84-year history of European Championship distance running. “I’ve been a professional runner since I was eight, nine, 10 years old,” he said, no way overawed by his own achievement.
What has also marked his progression is its transparency, Gjert making no secret of his willingness to push his sons – “I don’t want to be an angry man, I want to be a father. But if an angry man will bring them their dreams, I would rather be that, and tolerate what I am missing” – and openly discussing the demands of his training, telling us as the 2019 European Indoors in Glasgow “it’s not possible for them to go out on their own in any way, it is very restrictive like that, we measure every session in a very scientific way.”
It’s all been well charted too, from the 2016 documentary series for Norwegian TV, Team Ingebrigtsen, played out in front of an undeniable confidence, an attitude that overtly rejects Nordic egalitarianism by openly stating: “We will be the best.” What’s next for the best runner in the world is the breaking of world records. “I think we will see 3:25, for 1,500m, in a year or two,” Gjert said after Tokyo.
Which as Gjert knows, would break the world record of 3:26.00, which has stood to El Guerrouj since 1998, once upon a time the best runner in the world.
Teenage kicks . . . the rise of Jakob Ingebrigtsen: the rise of the teenage running prodigy
At age 16 . . . Runs the mile in Eugene, Oregon in 3:58.07, the youngest runner in history, only 16-year-old, to break four minutes; a month later he runs 3:56.29; wins the first of four consecutive European under-20 cross-country titles, and two European under-20 titles on the track; runs 3:39.92 for 1,500m in Stockholm.
At age 17 . . . wins 2018 European senior double gold over 1,500m/5,000m, the first in 84 years of championship history; runs 3:31.18 for 1,500m in Monaco; wins a second consecutive European Under-20 cross-country title.
At age 18 . . . wins European indoor gold over 3,000m, silver over 1,500m; runs 3:30.16 for 1,500m in Lausanne, 13:02.03 for 5,000m in London; finishes fourth in World Championship 1,500m, fifth in the 5,000m, in Doha; wins third European under-20 cross-country.
At age 19 . . . wins fourth European under-20 cross-country; after missing four months with a stress fracture in his lower back, runs European 2,000m record of 4:50.01 in Oslo in June, 3:28.68 for 1,500m in Monaco in July, and a Norwegian 3,000m record of 7:27.05 in Rome in September 2020.
At age 20 . . wins 2021 European indoor double gold over 1,500m/3,000m, runs a European 5,000m record of 12:48.45 in Florence in July, wins the 1,500m in Tokyo in an Olympic record of 3:28.32 in August, then runs a 3:47.24 mile in Oregon, two weeks later.
