confronted him<\/a>. He called the Americans \u201ccowards,\u201d accusing them of playing games with the pacemakers for the 1,500 meters, which resulted in a slower, more \u201ctactical\u201d race than Ingebrigtsen expected. Neither runner finished on the podium.<\/p>\nHocker has been trying to move on. Asked after the 5,000 on Friday if he respected Ingebrigtsen or thought Ingebrigtsen respected him, Hocker said \u201cI’m not going to try to guess what he thinks of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone on the start line for a global final deserves a lot of respect and you can have opinions on the race and how it goes,\u201d Hocker said. <\/p>\n
Calling out Kerr for missing European Championships<\/p>\n
The disagreement with Hocker came just as Ingebrigtsen’s latest flare-up involving Kerr seemed to be dying down. <\/p>\n
Kerr passed on the 1,500 this season, which is the distance for most four-lap races in elite track, to pursue the world record in the slightly longer and more iconic mile. <\/p>\n
Kerr ran 3 minutes, 42.66 seconds at a Diamond League meet in London in July to break Hicham El Guerrouj\u2019s 27-year-old record. He also won the mile at the Commonwealth Games. He did not, however, compete at European Championships, which staged a 1,500-meter race. Ingebrigtsen was not pleased.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely think it is ruining the sport if we are not participating,” he said. “We all have different plans, but I could never see myself in that position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr received a special invitation to run the 1,500 this week and extended his season by six weeks to accept. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlways under criticism,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cWhat’s been fun for me about this process is this is still an individual sport. It’s not a sport where we’re forced into certain racing strategies. Every person’s different and every athlete’s different in the way they approach the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
A history of showmanship, trash talk<\/p>\n
Funny enough, a lot of the history between Ingebrigtsen and Kerr began on the very track they’re set to run on Sunday night. <\/p>\n
At the 2023 world championships in Budapest, much was made of Ingebrigtsen’s gesturing to the fans as he hit the homestretch in a semifinal and then, almost casually, cruising past Kerr to finish first. <\/p>\n
Kerr got the last laugh three nights later when he won the final. Ingebrigtsen blamed it on being sick, which annoyed some people who felt that took away from Kerr’s breakthrough victory.<\/p>\n
In the ensuing year, the two bickered back and forth about a handful of issues, but mostly over what Kerr said was Ingebrigtsen’s need to use pacemakers, which are not allowed in major championships. <\/p>\n
Ingebrigtsen insisted that wasn’t the case and that, in most races, he was the pacemaker. Kerr suggested Ingebrigtsen’s Olympic title at 1,500 meters in 2021 came courtesy of Timothy Cheruiyot, who was racing to win but served as a pacemaker of sorts, holding the lead for much of the race before dropping to second.<\/p>\n
A comeback in the 5,000 but will there be an encore?<\/p>\n
Lost somewhere was that Ingebrigtsen’s win Friday night in the 5,000 \u2014 his better race over the years \u2014 was nothing short of remarkable. It came with limited training in the aftermath of surgery in February to remove built-up scar tissue on his left Achilles. A World Athletics pre-race statistical analysis predicted he’d come in 12th.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo much to prove,\u201d Ingebrigtsen said. \u201cWhat more can I do?\u201d<\/p>\n
His brother, Henrik, also marveled at Jakob’s ability to bounce back and get to the point where he could win against the best field of the year. <\/p>\n
Yet, as Jakob left the track Friday, it was no sure thing he’d be on the starting line for Sunday and the 1,500, which he insists is his favorite race, even if it has caused its share of heartache over the years. <\/p>\n
Ingebrigtsen hasn’t won a 1,500 in a major outdoor championship since the Tokyo Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s nowhere near the shape of Josh Kerr and those other guys, they’re in the shape of their life,\u201d Henrik said. “It would be really fun to see how close he could get with his limited shape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr thinks it would be fun, too. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s one of the best 1500-meter, 5K runners of all time and I\u2019m excited to go out and race him,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to lose, but I\u2019m excited to go out there and race.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\nSee AP\u2019s full sports coverage here<\/a>\n<\/p>\nCopyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUDAPEST \u2013 They have been bickering among themselves for three years now. The best part of it is,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,357732,357730,328931,328930,3,99,357731,452,453],"class_list":["post-845275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-isaac-nader","tag-isaac-nassar","tag-jakob-ingebrigtsen","tag-josh-kerr","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-timothy-cheruiyot","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}