Summary
Given the rivalry between Norway's Olympic 1500-metre champion, and World 5000-metre champion, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Great Britain's World 1500-metre champion, and World indoor 3000-metre champion, Josh Kerr, the men's 1500 metres at the 2024 Summer Olympics had been billed as a "Race for the Ages" by World Athletics President, middle-distance great, and double Olympic champion over the 'metric mile', Sebastian Coe. [2]
Ingebrigtsen had won the Olympic title three years earlier and his confidence and high expectations had affected his race strategy in recent years. After comfortably winning every race he entered, at the 2022 World Championships, Ingebrigtsen was in the lead of the 1500 metres, expecting to continue to the finish. However, Great Britain's Jake Wightman, who had tracked every move but never put his face in the wind, sprinted around him in the last 200 metres to take the World gold. Ingebrigtsen then entered his secondary event, the 5000 meters, with a chip on his shoulder, where his speed from the shorter distance overwhelmed the distance oriented runners.
Again at the 2023 World Championships, as Ingebrigtsen was in the lead, expecting to continue to the finish and regain his title, Kerr, a clubmate of Wightman since their childhoods, repeated almost exactly the Wightman tactic, tracking Ingebrigtsen while sheltering from the front, before attacking at 200 metres to go and sprinting around to take the gold.
Again Ingebrigtsen entered the 5000 meters with a point to prove, and again he won.
Ingebrigtsen came to a major championship again, the Olympic Games, as the world leader, his 3:26.73 came close to Hicham El Guerrouj's 26 year old world record of 3:26.00. Behind him the reigning World Champion, Kerr who had won the one major race between them that year, the Bowerman Mile; the returning Olympic silver medalist Timothy Cheruiyot, Brian Komen, Yared Nuguse, Cole Hocker, Neil Gourley and World Championship bronze medalist Narve Gilje Nordås. [3] Wightman was injured before the British trials, and had indeed carried injuries since 2022, having been unable to defend his title in 2023. All of the others, however, were in Paris, and qualified safely through the rounds to the final avoiding the repechage.
From the gun, Ingebrigtsen ran around the outside to take the lead as they entered the first turn. This move was immediately shadowed by Cheruiyot, Kerr, Komen, Nuguse, Hocker and Hobbs Kessler largely in a row. This was not to be a slow, strategic race that usually plagues championship finals, 54.9 for the first 400 was one of the fastest in history. On the second lap, Ingebrigtsen kept pushing splitting 1:51.5 opening up a gap stringing out suitors in same order, it had become clear Ingebrigtsen meant to run the race hard and take the sprint legs away from his would-be opponents, as he had done many times on the Diamond League circuit. Although the field was strung out by the infernal pace of the Norwegian, Cheruiyot resolutely tailed the Norwegian, and the other runners were able to take single file shelter behind the two leaders. As a result the line of runners stretched, but did not break.
The clock read 2:33.5 at the bell as the pace did not ease, and at this point Kerr, having sheltered behind the Kenyan while Ingebrigtsen had taken all of the wind, began moving up on the turn. Hocker moved around Nuguse and the Kenyans to get in position for his own ferocious final kick to be effective. As they entered the final turn Hocker started to apply his speed getting close behind. Kerr moved onto Ingebrigtsen's shoulder so Ingebrigtsen instinctively drifted out to make Kerr run farther. Hocker was headed for a hole along the rail but Ingebrigtsen moved back closing the door, leaving Hocker in a box, having to slow to look for an opening. As they entered the home stretch, the expected duel between Kerr and Ingebrigtsen appeared to come to fruition, with the Scotsman once again looking marginally the stronger.
Kerr began to pass Ingebrigtsen, who drifted away from the rail again to ease Kerr off the shortest distance line to the finish, but in doing so, he again opened the inside lane door for the wild card, Hocker, who seeing his chance reappear, sped through with a brutal finishing kick. Ingebrigtsen was by now fading badly from his early exertions, as it became a race of the 'kickers' over the last 50 metres between the American and Kerr, but Hocker now had far more momentum, passing 20 meters before the finish to take gold. As Kerr's kick faded in the last few metres Nuguse, who had missed most of the front-of-race action, kept coming, almost nipping past the disappointed Kerr on the line for silver, the two being separated by only one hundredth of a second, but being rewarded with the Olympic bronze. [4]
Ingebrigtsen, undone by his focus on Kerr and a forlorn attempt to run the legs out of his opponents without the help of the pacemakers who facilitated the tactic on the circuit (while the same opponents were able to use Cheruiyot to pace themselves) faded out of the medals altogether in fourth.
With Hocker's gold and Nuguse's bronze, the 2024 1500 meter final was the first time in 112 years that two Americans made it on the Olympic podium in the event. Another American, Hobbs Kessler, made it into and competed well in the final, finishing 5th in a new personal best. The result edged the United States just ahead of Great Britain on the all-time medal table for the event.
Ingebrigtsen went on to win the 5000 metres four days later.
