Jakob Ingebrigtsen Called the Brussels 1,500m Field a Bunch of Cowards

Jakob Ingebrigtsen finished fourth in the Diamond League 1,500m final in Brussels on Friday, then went into the mixed zone and accused Cole Hocker of manipulating the race’s pacing, saying he had spent the evening racing “a bunch of cowards.” The arrangement he was complaining about had been reported publicly days before the race, down to the splits the pacemaker was told to run.

Cameron Myers won the race and the Diamond Trophy in 3:30.14, four hundredths clear of Kenya’s Phanuel Kipkosgei Koech. Ethan Strand took third in 3:30.50 and Ingebrigtsen was two hundredths back in 3:30.52, hitting the track at the line in what he later called “very much a dive.” He has not led races this season, but he went to the front early in this one and was still there past 1,300m, and the three men who beat him all came past in the home straight.

“I’m very disappointed in the race and the result, I’m racing against a bunch of cowards,” he said in comments carried by Athletics Weekly, whose reporter was in the mixed zone. “It’s only Cameron [Myers] that’s a good racer, everyone else looked like losers, me included.” On Hocker: “We’re trying to win but with Cole, the pacemaker was swapped out for his own teammate. So from now on he is in no position to make any changes or decisions in the 1500m because he fooled us in terms of following the pace. Maybe he was sick or injured, or he didn’t have a good day at all.” In quotes published by Athletics Illustrated, he said his rivals had wanted “to run in the queue and hide themselves,” and that “I am not a hider myself.”

The pacemaker was Christian Jackson, an 800m runner at Virginia Tech. None of it was a secret. In a preview published before the final, LetsRun reported that Jackson, Hocker’s training partner, would be setting the pace, and printed the splits he had been given: 1:52 at 800m and 2:48.5 at 1,200m, which projects to a 3:30 finish. Jackson dropped out before the finish, and the race came home in 3:30.14.

Hocker got nothing out of it. He finished seventh in 3:30.80, equal to his season best, beaten by six men including Ingebrigtsen. He had said nothing publicly by Saturday.

There is a fair question inside the complaint, which is whether a rival’s training partner should be setting the pace in a Diamond League final at all. The series has never answered it. Pacemakers turn up once in the Diamond League’s meeting regulations, in the rule capping the men’s 1,500m field at 15 athletes “including pacemakers.” Nothing says who supplies them, who can ask for a change, or what pace they owe anyone. Athletes and their agents work that out with meet organizers.

Brussels was Ingebrigtsen’s third Diamond League race since he came back, and his fastest. He had Achilles surgery in February and spent 11 months out of competition before taking a fourth straight European 5,000m title on Aug. 10. He was fourth in 3:31.19 at Silesia on Aug. 23, where Strand won, fifth in 3:32.16 at Zurich on Aug. 27, where Hocker won, and fourth on Friday. Each run has been quicker than the last. He has said before that the 1,500m world record is within his range, and he told Athletics Illustrated he expects to “run circles around them in not too many months.” He was in the Brussels field without qualifying on points, on one of the four global wildcards the series keeps back for athletes who miss automatic entry.

Myers, the one rival Ingebrigtsen exempted, said the front-running had suited him fine. “For me that was sort of the perfect scenario because it meant that those guys were sort of using energy that I didn’t have to,” the 20-year-old told AAP. He ran 3:28.00 in Paris in June to take Oliver Hoare’s Australian record.

Both men race the 1,500m at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, a new World Athletics event that runs from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13. Ingebrigtsen is there on one of two exceptional invitations issued for the race, alongside Josh Kerr.