Defending champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen and world champion Josh Kerr safely negotiated the first step on the path to one of the most highly-anticipated races of the Paris Olympics on Friday when they came through their heats of the 1,500 metres.
Briton Kerr flirted with danger, sitting at the back of the pack until the bell then stumbling as his clipped a competitor while surging to the front to come home in three minutes, 35.83 to win the first heat. Norway’s Ingebrigtsen adopted a similar tactic in the third heat, steering clear of danger but leaving his push until the final 200 metres before easing down once safe.
“That was a blast, this stadium is very loud so I was very pleased to get out there and feel my legs,” Kerr said.
Asked about his limited racing season, he said: “I know my body, I know my race and I know my skills and I’m here to win the gold medal.”
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When Ingebrigtsen raced to gold in Tokyo, he appeared untouchable in the event and nobody, least of all the uber-confident Norwegian, could have foreseen back-to-back world championship defeats before he returned in Paris to defend his Olympic title.
The first came in Eugene in 2022, when Britain’s Jake Wightman had the temerity to pass him entering the last 200 metres, and then hold him off all the way to the line. A year later at the Budapest worlds, Tokyo bronze medallist Kerr delivered an amazing carbon copy for another British gold. Kerr backed it up with victory over a mile at the Eugene Diamond League meeting in May this year, though it’s safe to say neither defeat seemed to reduce the confidence of the Norwegian.
“Some of my competitors have clearly taken a step in the right direction but not a big step,” he said, having previously claimed he would have beaten Kerr over a two-mile race blindfolded. Ingebrigtsen, the fourth-fastest man in history, followed up with an impressive summer streak of 1,500m wins, culminating in a European record run in Monaco, and he is seeking to cap it off by matching Sebastian Coe in 1980 and 1984 as the only men to win two Olympic 1,500m titles.
Coe, who had a famously spiky relationship with his main rival Steve Ovett, has been licking his lips at the prospect of this showdown.
“It’s probably not a friendship made in heaven and that doesn’t bother me, we want that kind of thing in sport,” he said on Thursday. “It really could be a race for the ages and I’m very excited about it.”
Coe’s LA win was Britain’s last success in the race, though it still tops the all-time medal table, with five golds and 14 medals in all. Among the other contenders, Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot, silver medallist in Tokyo and the 2019 world champion, safely came through in the second heat won impressively by 19-year-old Ethiopian Ermias Girma.
The semifinals are on Sunday and the final on Tuesday but all those who failed to advance from the first round get another shot in a repechage round, with another six to advance, in an innovation for this Olympics.
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