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– We anchored the counter, says a terse Gjert Ingebrigtsen to NRK.
What appeared to be a real night out for the Ingebrigtsen team took a sharp turn when Jakob Ingebrigtsen was suddenly told that he was the record of the race and that he was last.
Thus, he is deprived of what he thought was a gold medal in the 1500 meters at the European Indoor Championships.
It is about Ingebrigtsen going off the list, which is not allowed, unless they reject it.
And that’s exactly what Ingebrigtsen believes it became. Ingebrigtsen has now been with the jury and is waiting for an answer.
– The rules are on my side. I don’t feel like I did anything wrong, there were just too many runners. None of us tried to push, it only happens when too many outsiders come. If the decision sticks and I lose the gold, I think I’ll go home. I do not know if I will run tomorrow because the 1500 meters was my main objective, Ingebrigtsen tells the organizer, and in the last part he points to tomorrow’s classification of the 3000 meters.
Ingebrigtsen barely managed to run a small round of victory with the Norwegian flag before being informed that he had been awarded the gold medal.
Photograph: Christine Olsson / TT / NTB
In the interview just after the finish on Friday night, Ingebrigtsen himself noted that he fell off the list in the first part of the 1500-meter race. It happened after he was involved in a bit of pushing, as is often the case at these race distances.
– It was on the list at the beginning. I felt that some Poles were trying to prevent me from letting go. It was good to get there first, and I felt the medal was deserved today, he said, adding that he does not think the incident will create problems.
There he was completely wrong. A few minutes after that statement, the race results list was updated: Ingebrigtsen was the puck and placed at the bottom.
Sporting director Erlend Slokvik, who participates in the championship in Poland, says he understands little why the jury made that decision.
Slokvik believes, on the contrary, that Ingebrigtsen ended up exiting due to a tactic planned by the Polish competitors, who had the supposedly stronger competitor, Marcin Lewandowski, on the starting line. Lewandowski now, after Ingebrigtsen’s record, also finished with the gold medal.
Here Ingebrigtsen and Lewandowski celebrate what they thought was gold and silver. Minutes later, the situation was reversed.
Photo: Czarek Sokolowski / AP
– Jakob is the album because he stepped inside the list. On TV we could see that the Poles had made a plan for how he should be locked up, Slokvik says, in clear reference to the fact that he thinks the Poles tried to take advantage of the fact that Ingebrigtsen tends to run very close to the list.
– We have filed a protest to look at the images of the video, so that we can go from there. He didn’t gain anything from it. It was prevented, says Slokvik.
The sports director says that Ingebrigtsen himself takes it all in stride, something we also got good proof of when the main character suddenly appeared for a small second during the video interview with Slokvik.
However, Ingebrigtsen still did not want to express himself fully. He is now awaiting a response to the appeal together with Slokvik and his father.
NRK expert Vebjørn Rodal says he finds it difficult to say anything about whether Ingebrigtsen has a good case or not.
– I don’t think we have good photos, so I think it’s hard to say something about it. The first time I saw it live, I didn’t get a good picture. On replay, we didn’t get a better angle. I think it is very difficult to express yourself, he says.
Pole Lewandowski, who ended up getting gold today, is in many ways something of an arch rival to Jakob Ingebrigtsen. He beat the Norwegian at exactly this distance two years ago.
Lewandowski was careful to especially rejoice over getting the gold medal today, because he knows what it feels like to be discarded.
– It’s a sport, so it can happen to anyone. It happened to me at the World Cup, so I know how it is, says the Pole in an interview with the organizer.
– In the race, Jakob was definitely better than me. He knows I prefer a slower pace, so he decided to take the lead and run really fast. I tried to catch it again, but couldn’t. It wouldn’t be a shame to lose for the guy who has almost set a world record, but I still have the gold today.
For Ingebrigtsen, the race was basically conducted in superior style. After engaging in the push, he put himself first. When he set the pace on the last lap, nobody managed to keep up. He crossed the finish line on time 3.37.54.
NRK will be back with more.
It was early in the race that the incident occurred. The full 1500 meters can be viewed here:
