The 100m has always been the blue-riband event of any athletics meet, but this season it has had a couple of unlikely challengers to its crown. Middle-distance running is suddenly exciting again: the flagship events of this weekend’s inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships are in fact likely to be the women’s 800m and men’s 1500m. World Athletics has made its stance clear, positioning them as the third-last race of the Saturday and Sunday night sessions respectively – just before the two 100m and 200m races.
This men’s 1500m is more soap opera than athletics event, the culmination of a series of squabbles and trash-talking back-and-forth that is set to finally combust in Budapest’s Gyula Zsivotzky National Athletics Centre.
The groundwork was laid more than two years ago, with the first instalment of athletics’ biggest personality clash played out in the Paris Olympic final. Norwegian great Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s feud with Britain’s Josh Kerr was expected to be decided on the track, but the pair were so preoccupied with fending off the other that American Cole Hocker was able to sneak past and take a glorious win.
Now the saga has taken another twist. Hocker is now part of the feud, with Ingebrigtsen taking exception to the way the Olympic champion requested his own pacemakers at the Diamond League Final but didn’t actually follow their pace, leading the Norwegian to huffily accept the challenge of front-running. He ran out of steam in the final straight and ended fourth; Hocker only had enough for seventh.
As in Paris it wasn’t one of the most prominent names who took the win; Australian rising star Cameron Myers snuck through the inside lane in a manner reminiscent of Hocker’s own Olympic triumph. Ingebrigtsen, in an extraordinarily incendiary post-race interview, slated the entire field – himself included – as “losers” but was able despite his frustration to compliment the 20-year-old, conceding, “It’s only Cameron who did a good race”.
He later apologised for the “losers” comment but doubled down on branding Hocker and his other competitors as “cowardly”. It always used to be the case that men’s sprinting had the egos and personalities – now it’s the 1,500m runners.
Ingebrigtsen later said he and Hocker had smoothed things over. But by the time the pair next line up they will be deadly enemies again. This weekend there isn’t just a jazzy new title and $150,000 dollars – the prize for each individual champion – on the line, but pride in a grudge match too.
Ingebrigtsen highlighted the fact that many believe athletics is crying out for this sort of boxing-style trash-talk, telling Norwegian paper Dagbladet: “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.”
Evidently World Athletics is of the same mind, and the format of the Ultimate Championships, a brand-new event, allows the governing body to capitalise on it. Designed to fill the gap in the calendar in years without a major championships, Ultimates sees the world and Olympic champions in each discipline competing against the Diamond League winners and the best-performing athletes over the season.
As it makes the rules, World Athletics has cherry-picked them to make sure ‘exceptional invites’ are extended to other top athletes who haven’t qualified by merit. Both Ingebrigtsen and Kerr were given wildcards, which WA said “ensures the race will be an epic test of who is truly the best of the best”.
It all makes Ultimate Championships an all-star event tailor-made for this attention-deficit era. Unlike the much-maligned and ultimately pitiful Grand Slam Track, it includes most field events too. And it has a sheen of respectability from the fact that World Athletics itself has organised it, and the athletes seem to have bought into it entirely – no doubt helped by the $10m prize pot.
It’s an undeniable fact that athletics needs more events that transcend its usual audience in the way the Olympic competition always does, but how much of an outward ripple this one makes remains to be seen. And key to that is this intriguing men’s 1500.
The interpersonal drama is part of the reason for its high profile, but in its own right it has also made for some of the most compelling championship racing of recent months. Myers is on the up and is riding a wave of confidence from victory at a major meet; there are a trio of in-form Americans competing alongside Hocker in Paris bronze medallist Yared Nuguse, Hobbs Kessler, and Diamond League Final third place-finisher Ethan Strand; and Kenya’s Phanuel Kipkosgei Koech, second in Brussels, is another outstanding talent coming into his own.
As for those responsible for much of the drama: Hocker’s sole win over 1500m this year came at the Zurich Diamond League; Ingebrigtsen’s indifferent form since returning from Achilles surgery in February has levelled the playing field; new mile world record holder Kerr has not raced since his Commonwealth Games triumph, with Ingebrigtsen critical of athletes “ruining” the sport by not competing at every championship possible. The Scot shrugged off the criticism and simply said, “I’m not going to lose,” ahead of their reunion.
Kerr and Ingebrigtsen have not even faced off in two years, since that Olympic final; it’s no wonder World Athletics were desperate to have both in Budapest, and to have the feud finally come to a head. The athletes have done their talking: now it’s time to walk into the ring. And the governing body, and the sport as a whole, will hope all eyes will be on the start line.
