4 min readThe men’s 1500 meters has been as close to a soap opera as you can get. Luckily for us, the season finale is almost here.
On Tuesday, at 2:50 p.m. ET, the Olympic title will be decided. It’s an event with seemingly two main characters—Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr of Great Britain—but the supporting cast, certainly, will demand attention. Team USA’s trio of Cole Hocker, Yared Nuguse, and Hobbs Kessler should contend for medals, and expect Timothy Cheruiyot and Narve Gilje Nordås to be in the hunt as well.
We got a taste for the final in the semifinal rounds on Sunday. Ingebrigtsen, the 2020 Olympic champion, and Kerr, the 2023 World champion, were matched up against each other in the first heat. Both qualified quite comfortably.
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After the race, Kerr told reporters that he anticipates the final will be ruthless and it should be a spectacle for fans. “They should just be expecting one of the most vicious and hardest 1500s the sport’s seen in a very long time,” he said. “I’m ready to go after it. I think we all are.”
“There’s been a lot of talk and words over the last 12 months, even two years,” he continued. “I’m just looking to settle that a little bit on Tuesday and give up my best performance.”
Ingebrigtsen, when asked about Kerr’s prediction, seemed to shrug it off. “Racing is what you want it to be,” he said. “I thrive in the competitive scene, that’s why I do this. So maybe there’s a difference among us.”
Before we settle in front of our TVs for the finale, let’s start with a season recap.
The war of words
Last August, at the World Championships in Budapest, Ingebrigtsen and Kerr battled to the line of the 1500-meter final, with Kerr surprisingly holding off Ingebrigtsen in the final meters, taking the win in 3:29.38.
That triggered, over the following months, a verbal barrage between the two. After the race, Ingebrigtsen told reporters that he was suffering from illness, which threw him off his game, and he downplayed Kerr’s win, saying that the Scotsman was just “the next guy.” A week later, Kerr responded, telling LetsRun, “He can be disrespectful to me, that’s fine, I still have the World Championship gold medal.”
During the winter, the jabs continued. Kerr said in November, on the Sunday Plodcast, that Ingebrigtsen was surrounded by “yes men” and his ego could get in the way of winning gold in Paris.
The quips reached a climax in February. After Kerr set an indoor world best in the 2 mile (8:00.67) at the Millrose Games, Ingebrigtsen joked that he could have beaten Kerr “blindfolded.” When Kerr was asked about Ingebrigtsen’s dig ahead of the World Indoor Championships in February, he cheekily laughed and responded: “No comment.”
A race for the ages
Banter aside, the men’s 1500 meters will arguably be the most compelling track race of the Olympics. Kerr and Ingebrigtsen have both been in the best form of their lives.
Kerr started off the season strong, running 7:42.98 to win the World Indoor Championships in the 3,000 meters. But Ingebrigtsen had a slower build up. An Achilles injury nagged him over the winter and he didn’t open his season until May 25—in a showdown with Kerr in the Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic.
The race, in effect, served as an early dress rehearsal for Paris. Kerr outlasted Ingebrigtsen, 3:45.34 to 3:45.60. Yared Nuguse was not far behind them in 3:46.22 for third.
Ingebrigtsen would run five 1500s in the following weeks, finishing his pre-Olympics block with a personal best of 3:26.73 at the Monaco Diamond League on July 12. Kerr, on the other hand, raced only twice during that time—two 800s at the UK Championships.
Expect the final in Paris to be quick. Ingebrigtsen, historically, runs his best races off a fast pace, where his competitors gradually fall off the lead pack. Kerr doesn’t like to lead early on, but his kick at the end of races is vicious and he’s rarely out of position to access it.
Ingebrigtsen’s Olympic record of 3:28.32 from Tokyo could go down.
But while Kerr and Ingebrigtsen have been talked up the most, they’re not locks for gold and silver.
The reigning silver medalist in the event, Timothy Cheruiyot of Kenya, has been rounding into form lately. And U.S. Olympic Trials champion Cole Hocker has a deadly kick that has reached a new level this year. And then there’s Yared Nuguse, the American record holder in the mile. He’s struggled, a bit, to close out races this summer, but his 3:43.97 mile PR speaks for itself.
Also keep an eye on Hobbs Kessler, who, at age 21, has developed into a tactically sound racer. His kick—and 1:43 speed over 800 meters—could surprise some people at the end.
Finally—for an added sub-plot—pay attention to Narve Gilje Nordås, who also hails from Norway and won 1500 bronze in Budapest last year. But don’t expect Ingebrigtsen and Nordås to work together to break apart the field; Nordås is coached by Ingebrigtsen’s father, Gjert Ingebrigtsen, who Jakob has publicly scorned and accused of being physically violent.
On Friday, after the first round of the 1500, Nordås was overheard telling Kerr, “You can beat my countryman,” according to the Norwegian outlet VG.
Regardless of who wins the “season finale” on Tuesday—we at least know there will be no cliffhanger.
Theo Kahler is the news editor at Runner’s World. He’s a former all-conference collegiate runner at Winthrop University, and he received his master’s degree in liberal arts studies from Wake Forest University, where he was a member of one of the top distance-running teams in the NCAA. Kahler has reported on the ground at major events such as the Paris Olympics, U.S. Olympic Trials, New York City Marathon, and Boston Marathon. He’s run 14:20 in the 5K, 1:05:36 in the half marathon, and enjoys spotting tracks from the sky on airplanes. (Look for colorful ovals around football fields.)
