Jakob Ingebrigtsen Is Supposed to Run the 1,500m in Budapest, but His Brother Has Already Booked His Flight Home

Jakob Ingebrigtsen won the 5,000m at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest on Friday night, running 12:59.24 in his first race under 13 minutes in five years. He has a place in Sunday’s 1,500m as well. Whether he takes it is a decision he has left until the morning, and his older brother has already bought him a ticket out of Hungary.

He left it late. Still fifth at the bell, he did not hit the front until the home straight, and he covered the last 100m in 12.60 seconds to close the lap in 54.39. Cole Hocker held on for second in 13:00.05 and Parker Wolfe took third in 13:00.13. The top seven were covered by 1.16 seconds, which is what a 7:58.94 first 3,000m will do to a race.

Ingebrigtsen has not run a 5,000m that fast since June 2021, when he ran 12:48.45 in Florence, still his personal best and the European record until Sweden’s Andreas Almgren took it down to 12:44.27 in Stockholm in June last year. Most of two seasons sit in between: an Achilles problem that would not settle, surgery in February, and nearly 11 months between the world 5,000m final in Tokyo last September and his next race. That came at the European Championships in Birmingham on Aug. 10, where he won the 5,000m in 13:15.29, 16 seconds slower than he ran on Friday. “Being injured, I was fearing the worst outcome and did not know if I would be able to run at all, especially at this level,” he said in Budapest, according to World Athletics. “This is amazing, I am extremely happy.”

His Brother Would Rather He Went Home

He would not be drawn on the 1,500m afterwards, and left the decision until he had slept. Henrik Ingebrigtsen, in Budapest watching his brother race, was less diplomatic about it. “I have booked a plane ticket home for him, and I hope he uses it, so to speak,” he told the Norwegian newspaper VG after the race, in comments translated from Norwegian. His argument is the injury record. Jakob has a title and $150,000 out of this trip already, and Henrik does not think a second race is worth whatever small thing it might cost.

Strictly speaking, Ingebrigtsen should not be in Sunday’s 1,500m at all. He had no world ranking over the distance to enter on, and Josh Kerr sat 85th after the 4:11.23 he ran in the Tokyo final on a torn calf, as LetsRun laid out at the time. On Aug. 24, World Athletics added a 13th place to the field and handed the pair of them exceptional invitations, saying the race “could not in good faith be considered a full lineup of the greatest athletes on the planet” without them. Eighteen days later, one of the two is thinking about going home.

The 1,500m Has Been the Harder Race

His summer over the shorter distance gives him a reason to. He was fourth at Silesia in 3:31.19, fifth in Zürich in 3:32.16 and fourth again in the Diamond League final in Brussels in 3:30.52, and the men who beat him are mostly here. Hocker won in Zürich. Cam Myers, Phanuel Kipkosgei Koech and Ethan Strand all finished ahead of him in Brussels, and all three are on Sunday’s start list.

Brussels is also where he called the field “a bunch of cowards” and said that everyone other than Myers “looked like losers, me included,” comments he made to Athletics Weekly after the race and apologized for the next day, though he did not take back his complaint about Hocker’s team supplying the pacemaker. The two had not raced each other since. On Friday, Hocker finished 0.81 behind him.

The 1,500m final goes at 8:12 p.m. in Budapest on Sunday, on the closing night of the championship. It is worth another $150,000 to whoever wins it.