A broker is a miser, spending the pennies of his energy with great stinginess.
The Runner, John L. Parker
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In December, the Ingebrigtsen brothers passed through Barcelona and the organizers of the Cursa dels Nassos (Barcelona’s San Silvestre) had given me the opportunity to jog through the Olympic Village with three of them, along with Henrik, Filip and the phenomenal Jakob, and then they had also let me sit down to talk with Jakob, already Olympic champion in the 1,500m and world champion in the 5,000m (and multi-gold European in both distances).
And I asked the genius:
–What is missing to round off your sports career?
(And perhaps the question was somewhat hasty, since Jakob Ingebrigtsen is barely 22 years old: that is, he has a whole sports career ahead of him).
And the man told me:
–If something obsesses me, it is being the 1,500 world champion.
Well, well, no.
Obsessions are cursed.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen sigue sin su oro mundial del 1,500.
It was taken from him this Wednesday by Josh Kerr, British like Jake Wightman, the British man who a year ago, in Eugene, had also sentenced the Norwegian to silver.
They are traced races with an identical ending: a Briton knocking down the Norwegian.
Steve Cram, British like Wightman or like Kerr, world champion like Wightman or like Kerr (in his case, forty years ago), had not seen this one coming, because the day before he had told me:
-Veo a Ingebrigtsen invincible.
But don’t be fooled: Ingebrigtsen did everything right.
Wise and a metronome even at 22, he had established his cruising speed from the first 500 (1m10s83), a pace that should have taken him to the 3m30s barrier, while Kerr crouched behind him and Mario García Romo, the only Spaniard in the appointment, was behind the tail (sixth, in 3m30s26).
Then events seemed to follow their natural course.
Ingebrigtsen is art and essay, a roller skating on the synthetic, an El Guerruj 2.0, smooth in appearance, stormy for those who follow in its wake.
At every hundred meters, one tenth of a mile faster. The Norwegian, on street one, and the rest, managing the pain. They would cross a thousand in 2m22s06, and from there a little more: a 100 in 13s83, the next in 13s64, the next in 13s30, the next in 12s91, and Kerr, stubborn, wouldn’t let go, and in the last straight he appeared to torment to the Norwegian, just as Wightman had done a year ago, what a curse: 3m29s38 for Kerr, 3m29s65 for Ingebrigtsen.
(…)
The story is unhappy, a punishment for Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and it is also bizarre.
Well, the Ingebrigtsen, in their own way, are serial meat.
The Norwegian Kardashians, they call them.
The Norwegian Kardashians had spent years filming and broadcasting an autobiographical serial: Team Ingebrigtsen.
They can take a look at it.
It is in Youtube.
Team Ingebrigtsen has reached five seasons, and those of us who watched the episodes had a blast. The family histories were a jumble of training sessions, family disputes, confessions, triumphs and failures crowned by the demands of Gjert, the paterfamilias, and the portrait of the child-athletes, who were growing older and brighter.
Four of the kids ran, and they did it very well – both Henrik, Filip, and Jakob, have been 1,500 European champions -, and Ingrid, one of the little ones, also did it, and everything was going reasonably well until a conflict between her, the girl Ingrid, and the father had broken everything.
We will never know exactly what happened between the father and the daughter – “Ingrid has had a health problem and has stopped running”, Jakob limited himself to telling me in that talk in Barcelona – but the boys ended up throwing the father out, they no longer want to heard of him, and the father had taken his junk and systems elsewhere.
Specifically, to other Norwegian athletics tracks.
This is how Gjert Ingebrigtsen, expelled from his family, had met Narve Gilde Nordás (24), until then a thousand-year-old of 3m36s23 in 2022 who, by art and craft of his exiled father, has dropped to 3m29s47 in a single year, and she had flown up to bronze last night, just three hundredths behind Ingebrigtsen.
And now: the conflict.
Well, from the perspective of the Ingebrigtsen brothers, Nordás is no longer a troupe.
Now it is a danger.
(…)
Before coming to Budapest, Jakob Ingebrigtsen had told the Norwegian Federation:
-Let no one credit my father. And I don’t want Nordás in our hotel.
And the Norwegian Federation, intimidated by the power of the myth, had bowed its head.
Then, already in Budapest, everyone had started running. And over the days, both Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Narve Gilde Nordás had agreed to the final this Wednesday, all a gibberish for the Norwegian federations and a tongue twister for Gjert Ingebrigtsen, the former guru whose wishes, yesterday, had to be a hodgepodge of feelings found.
While the man was contemplating the 1,500, who was he with?
With his son, or with his pupil?
And would he finally rejoice in his son’s defeat?
