Tokyo (AFP)
Norwegian prodigy Jakob Ingebrigtsen (20) won his first Olympic title by winning the 1,500m at the Tokyo Games on Saturday.
Ingebrigtsen was ahead in 3 min 28 sec 32 the Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot, 2019 world champion (3 min 29 sec 01), and the Briton Josh Kerr (3 min 29 sec 05).
For his first Olympics, the youngest of the Ingebrigtsen siblings struck a very big blow.
European champion of the 1500m and 5000m in 2018 in Berlin at only 17 years old, the Norwegian had decided to focus exclusively on the 1500m, despite a convincing victory over 5000m against the future Olympic gold medalist and record holder of the distance world, the Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei, in June in Florence in the Diamond League.
Well wedged behind Cheruiyot, Ingebrigtsen accelerated 150 m from the finish to leave the Kenyan in place.
The Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen leads in front of the Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot, at the start of the last turn of the 1500m, on August 7, 2021 at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Ben STANSALL AFP
Cheruiyot is coming back from far away.
Fourth in the Kenyan selections, he was drafted because the second in the race, Kamar Etyang, had not met one of the criteria to be selected by not submitting to three anti-doping tests out of competition in the last ten months.
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