INGEBRIGTSEN Jakob

General
FAMOUS FAMILY
He has four older brothers Kristoffer, Martin, Henrik and Filip, one younger brother William and one younger sister Ingrid. Kristoffer and Martin competed as runners in childhood but did not go on to compete internationally, and there is a 25-year age gap between the eldest sibling [Kristoffer] and the youngest [William]. Their father Gjert coaches the brothers alongside working for a Norwegian logistics company, while their mother Tone runs a pair of hairdressing salons. Gjert has published a book called 'How To Raise a World Champion' and the family have featured in a Norwegian documentary series named 'Team Ingebrigtsen' that follows the careers of Jakob, Henrik and Filip, and how their younger siblings Ingrid and William are taking their first steps into the sport. Jakob admits that being coached by his father has affected their relationship. "It's complicated. The father-son relationship is kind of sacrificed because to be the coach to me and my brothers is a full-time job for him. We don't really have time for the normal father and son connection because we are always training, and always thinking 24/7 about how we can develop as runners to become the best." (lifeinnorway.net, 08 Feb 2021; Team Ingebrigtsen YouTube channel, 26 Apr 2020; letemps.ch, 11 Oct 2019; telegraph.co.uk, 26 Sep 2019; independent.co.uk, 23 Sep 2019; imdb.com, 01 Jan 2019; nrk.no, 12 Nov 2020; dagbladet.mo, 18 Jun 2020; fastrunning.com, 27 Sep 2017)

FATHER AND COACH
He said his father Gjert, who admitted to knowing nothing about athletics when he first started coaching Henrik, has improved through his experiences coaching Henrik and Filip. As a result, Jakob believes he has benefitted most from the mistakes his older brothers made under their father's guidance. "After 10 or 15 years of improving [his coaching] programme, it's going to be good. That's where we are now [2019]. Henrik has done a lot of stupid things [under Gjert's coaching], Filip has done some and I haven't really done anything stupid. That's why I am going to run so fast in the end." He also believes his ability as an athlete is not a result of genetics. "You're not born with talent. When I was four, five, six years old, people said that I had more talent than them, but I'd already run maybe 10 times more than the people I was competing against. There's a lot of talk about children doing sport in Norway and it's all about having fun. For me that's unknown. Why I've been so good at running is because I started from an early age. I'm probably going to peak between 19 and 22 because I'll have been training for 15 years at the same level as a 30-year-old guy. I started doing the same mileage and amount of training as a guy 10 years older than me." (telegraph.co.uk, 26 Sep 2019; runningmagazine.ca, 06 Jan 2021)

FAMILY TRADITION
By winning gold in the 1500m at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin, Germany he became the third member of the Ingebrigtsen family to win a European championship title at that distance, following Henrik in 2012 and Filip in 2016. (SportsDeskOnline, 19 Mar 2021; scandinaviantraveler.com, 27 Jun 2019)

In 2018 he became the first athlete to win gold in the 1500m and 5000m at the same edition of the European championships, when he triumphed in both events at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin, Germany. His gold in the 1500m in Berlin at age 17 years and 325 days made him the youngest male athlete to win a European championship gold medal at the time. (SportsDeskOnline 19 Mar 2021; olympicchannel.com, 11 Aug 2018; theguardian.com, 12 Aug 2018)