Not even one of Norway’s most likely candidates for Olympic gold managed to deliver as expected Tuesday night. Norwegian sports fans were stunned when Jakob Ingebrigtsen not only failed to win gold in the 1500-meter race, but didn’t even claim a spot on the winners’ platform.
“It wasn’t quite the final we’d hoped for,” conceded officials for the national athletics federation’s Team Norway, after Ingebrigtsen placed fourth and his rival teammate Narve Gilje Nordås finished seventh. Ingebrigtsen quickly blamed himself on national television, telling Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that he started the race “a bit too hard,” couldn’t keep up the pace and ended up finishing behind Cole Hocker of the US, Josh Kerr of Great Britain and Yared Nuguse, also of the US. All three also set personal records and finished under 3.28 minutes.
“What an enormous downturn for Jakob Ingebrigtsen,” claimed NRK commentator Jann Post. Nordås called both Hocker’s gold and Ingebrigtsen’s loss of it “very surprising.”
Ingebrigtsen seemed surprised, too. “Of course I’m disappointed,” he told NRK right after the race, “but there are many different reasons such things happen. It’s stupid when I ruined it for myself.” He’s already won Olympic gold and several international championships, and made it clear that he only had himself to blame for not winning any medal.
“I had enormously good legs and a fantastic feeling” before the race began, he told NRK. “Then I became a bit too sure of myself, made a much-too-hard opening and ran quite hard mid-race, too. So it ended with fourth place.”
Ingebrigtsen is known for being self-confident, even brash, and some Norwegians were quick to comment on social media that perhaps he deserved “to be brought down a notch.” Others defended him, noting how both Ingebrigtsen and Kerr have succeeded at attracting both attention and interest in the sport.
Norway’s star runners will have another chance at gold in the Olympics’ 5000-meter race, but nine days after the Olympics began, Norway’s total medal count stood at a lowly one: Markus Rooth’s victory in the decathlon over the weekend. One commenter on Team Norway’s own Facebook page suggested that now Norway may better understand Rooth’s “momentous achivement.”
Given all the pre-Olympic hype, Norwegian sports fans are disappointed. On paper, Norway has never had a stronger or more diversified Olympic team, and it has its largest troop at a summer Olympics ever. The country expected more than just one medal after more than a week of competition in Paris.
Its Scandinavian rivals are doing much better: Sweden was able to boast three gold medals, three silver medals and two bronze as of Tuesday night, while Denmark has two medals. The US, by comparison, held 86 medals, followed by China with 59 and Australia with 35. At least Norwegian decathlon star Rooth could get a hero’s welcome when he returned home to Oslo.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
