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Jakob Ingebrigtsen has opened up on his failure to win the men’s 1500m final at the Paris Olympics, admitting he got his tactics badly wrong.
Ingebrigtsen, 24, won 5,000m gold at the Games but missed out on a medal in defence of his 1500m crown as Cole Hocker, Josh Kerr and Yared Nuguse surged past him in the home straight.
The Norwegian, who is preparing to compete over 1500m and 3000m in Apeldoorn this week at the European Athletics Indoor Championships, says he ran the first lap so hard that it was “impossible” to win the race. But he insisted he wouldn’t be changing the way he approaches such races.
“I tried to win and that’s my way of winning,” Ingebrigtsen told The Telegraph. “I’ve never really dipped for the line in my life.
“The mistake was I went out way too fast. It is humanly impossible to have a 54-second opening lap from a standing start and not struggle the last 200m. I realised I was going way too fast but still I saw a gap opening with 700 to go. And that is when I realised my only chance of winning was to keep pushing.”
Ingebrigtsen’s rivalrly with Kerr dominated the build-up to the final, so much so that Hocker sprung something of a surprise, but he insisted the spat was not a distraction.
“I don’t know why he is so interested in me, but I guess it’s because I’m the one to beat,” Ingebrigtsen said of Kerr, who will not be competing at the European Indoors.
“I respect my competition and my opponents but that’s what they are. If I can do what I am able to do, and try to focus on my own things, and do that as good as I can, it’s irrelevant who I am standing beside. I’m on my own mission.”
Ingebrigtsen begins his quest in the 1500m with the heats due to take place on the first evening session of the championships on 6 March. The event could prove to be a re-run of the final in Istanbul two years ago with Great Britain’s Neil Gourley and France’s Azeddine Habz – the silver and bronze medallists respectively – also on the entry list.
