Olympic lessons … when fourth-place is actually a startling success

Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the 2021 Olympic champion in the 1500 m, was shut out of the medals in this event at the Paris Olympics. If you follow running at all, you’ve seen the race. The Norwegian athlete took the lead early, but was unable to hold it all the way to the end, passed by three of his rivals in the final stretch.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen misses podium in shocking men’s 1,500m final

Much has already been written about this race. Was Ingebrigtsen overconfident?  Arrogant? Had his training been insufficient? Does this result show the limits of the “Norwegian method” of training? Was he so focussed on beating his rival, eventual silver medal winner Josh Kerr, that he foolishly discounted all other contenders in the race? Whatever the reason, for most commentators, the story, at its root, is simple. Ingebrigtsen failed – for whatever reason – and the others took advantage of his failure and succeeded.

I don’t buy it.

If you look down the list of the finishers and their results, this is what you see – 1st place = personal best, Olympic record, American record; 2nd place = personal best and national record; 3rd place = personal best; 5th place = personal best; 6th place = national record and personal best; 7th place = season’s best; 8th place = national record and personal best; 9th place = personal best. Just about the only top-10 finisher in the race who did NOT run a season’s best time was Ingebrigtsen himself, and he still ran a time that beat his gold medal performance from Tokyo.

This race was a success – a success of the true ideals of sport. To go farther, faster and higher than ever before. To transcend our known limits. Ingebrigtsen pushed for that limit– he was on world record pace with 200 m left to go, and still in the lead less than 100 m from the finish line – and dared the others to keep up. Ingebrigtsen led from the front, challenged the field and demanded their best to beat him.  If you weren’t ready to push yourself to a place that you had never been, then you weren’t going to win that race. Yes, he fell dramatically just short, but if we don’t reach for places that we have never been, then we will never get there.  Honestly, what more could you want from the Olympic champion at the Olympics?

To put a triathlon spin on this, you can also consider Hayden Wilde’s bold move in the triathlon race, where he pulled way from rival Alex Yee, but faded in the last few hundred metres. Unlike Ingebrigtsen, though, Wilde was able to hang on for the silver medal.

What does this mean for runners (and triathletes) like us, who are never going to be in an Olympic final?  I think it is simple.  Sometimes it’s okay to fly closer to the sun than we think is safe. Maybe we will crash and burn, but maybe we’ll fly farther than we’ve ever dreamed possible.

Darian Silk is Clinical Exercise Physiologist based in Toronto who coaches endurance athletes of all types.  Read more about Darian here or email him at darian@teamatomica.com.  You can also check out his TrainingPeaks profile here.