Jakob Ingebrigtsen Apologizes for Calling His Rivals Losers

Jakob Ingebrigtsen apologized on Saturday for calling his rivals losers after the Diamond League 1,500m final in Brussels. He did not apologize for calling Cole Hocker a coward.

“I shouldn’t have called anyone losers. I apologise for that. It was beneath me, regardless of the adrenaline and emotions,” he said in a statement reported by the Guardian, whose Sean Ingle was at the stadium. “But I stand by what I said about Cole and his team acting cowardly.”

That is not quite what he said on Friday night. In the mixed zone he said the pacemaker had been “swapped out for his own teammate” and that Hocker “fooled us in terms of following the pace.” On Saturday the charge was that Hocker’s camp had advertised a race they did not run. “They told the other athletes and the organisers that they were targeting a specific pace and were bringing in their own pacemaker to set that pace, but then they did something completely different,” he said. “When you promise the crowd a fast race, you have a responsibility to follow through, at least in my view. This isn’t about me losing. I wasn’t good enough.”

The pacemaker was Christian Jackson, an 800m runner at Virginia Tech who trains with Hocker, and his splits were published before the final: 1:52 at 800m and 2:48.5 at 1,200m. Hocker’s agent, Ray Flynn, told the Norwegian paper VG that the pacemakers were announced at the technical meeting and that nobody was misled. The race came home in 3:30.14, within 0.14 of the pace Jackson was hired to set.

Nobody went with him except Ingebrigtsen. By the Guardian’s account he took up the pacing himself only after the rest of the field let it go. He led, ran a season best of 3:30.52, and was outkicked by three men who had spent the race sitting behind him.

Flynn answered in the Norwegian press, and not about splits. “Jakob now appears as a whiny runner who blames others,” he wrote in an email to Dagbladet. “It is embarrassing to see a great champion complain and blame other runners when he doesn’t win. It is completely disrespectful to his competitors, who now regularly beat him in the 1500 metres.”

Ingebrigtsen said he and Hocker had already settled it between themselves. “Cole and I talked it through after the race. As far as we’re concerned, the matter is settled, so I don’t really understand why his agent is getting involved in all of this now,” he said. “If you’re not allowed to show a bit of passion after a race, you should find a sport that doesn’t want an audience.” On Instagram he put the outburst down to “maybe a little too much adrenaline and emotion when the microphones were thrown in front of me,” and said he would “always call things as I see it.”

Since coming back in August from 11 months out with an Achilles injury, Ingebrigtsen has finished fourth at Silesia, fifth at Zurich and fourth in Brussels, losing across those three races to Ethan Strand, Hocker, Phanuel Kipkosgei Koech, Cameron Myers, Yared Nuguse and Hobbs Kessler. He has also run faster every time out, and he won a fourth straight European 5,000m title on Aug. 10.

He and Hocker were both entered in the 1,500m at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, which runs from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13. Ingebrigtsen was down for the 5,000m as well, and Dagbladet reported on Saturday that he is now likely to run only that.