The only thing better than a friendly rivalry is an entirely acrimonious rivalry.
The chummy, respectful rivalry in which the likes of Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal engaged for years was all well and good, but I’d take one where there’s pettiness and spitefulness and clear dislike over that any day of the week.
The latter is exactly this kind of acidic rivalry that’s developing between Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
I love it. And it’s exactly what track and field needs.
Kerr and Ingebrigtsen are currently the two best male 1500m runners on the planet and they will clash for the first time this summer when they both line-up in the Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic in Oregon on Saturday.
Ingebrigtsen, a 23-year-old from Norway, is Olympic champion at the distance and is the fastest 1500m runner of this generation.
Kerr, a 26-year-old Scot, is the reigning world 1500m champion.
The Edinburgh man held off Ingebrigtsen in the closing metres of the world championship final last August to take the title and while the competition on the track helps fuel this rivalry it’s the war-of-words they’re engaging in off the track that makes it quite so delicious.
For some time, it’s been clear that Kerr and Ingebrigtsen are far from best buddies.
And in the aftermath of Kerr’s World Championship win last August, the rivalry went up another level.
Kerr outsprinted Ingebrigtsen in the home straight to win gold in what was an almost carbon copy of fellow Scot Jake Wightman’s gold medal run at the 2022 World Championships, at which he also beat Ingebrigtsen into second place.
In the aftermath of Kerr’s win, the Norwegian claimed he’d been sick all week and that“if I hadn’t run in the final, he [Kerr] would probably have won. If you stumble or fall, then someone is going to win the race, and he was just the next guy.”
Funnily enough, Kerr didn’t take too kindly to being called “just the next guy”, hitting back that Ingebrigtsen was “disrespectful” and that he’s got ““flaws in the manners realm.”
The next instalment of the trash-talking came earlier this year following Kerr’s stunning run which saw him break the world 2-mile record in New York.
It was, by most people’s standards, an impressive performance, but not by Ingebrigstsen’s.
Had he been fit he would, said the Norwegian, who holds the outdoor 2-mile word record but sat out the 2024 indoor season due to an achilles injury, have beaten him “blindfolded”, prompting athletics’ magazine, Runners World to write the headline “Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who lost to Josh Kerr without a blindfold, says he could beat him with a blindfold.”
The Norwegian has also said he knows that he wins “98 out of 100 times” against Kerr and Wightman. “I’m pretty sure I’ll win next time,” he added recently.
And when Kerr hits back by insisting he won’t stand for being “disrespected” and “belittled”, Ingebrigtsen calls his retaliation a “desperate attempt” at psychological warfare.
As good as Kerr and Ingebrigtsen are at running 1500m, they’re proving themselves to be even better at generating excitement and intrigue in a sport that’s in dire need of some compelling storylines.
At its best, track and field is, in my opinion, one of the most watchable sports there is. But what’s so severely damaged the sport in recent years and contributed considerably to its departure from the spotlight is an utter lack of characters.
Usain Bolt is a superstar that any sport would be grateful to have but since his retirement in 2016, track and field has been seriously lacking in any breakout names.
I’m not necessarily suggesting that Kerr or Ingebrigstsen will ever come close to Bolt’s level of fame but what the pair are managing to do is create a level of interest off the track that’s been sadly lacking.
It’s impossible to know just how genuine the dislike between Kerr and Ingebrigtsen is, although I sense it’s certainly not entirely fabricated.
Kerr’s a smart guy and he’s a calculated guy, in the best sense of the word, and so he’s far too clever to get caught up in anything he doesn’t want to be caught up in. Of the current crop of British athletes, I’d suggest Kerr is one of the most media-savvy and so he knows exactly what he’s doing when he’s engaging with Ingebrigtsen’s pettiness.
Certainly, the Norwegian isn’t a hard guy to dislike.
After Wightman out-sprinted him to win the 2022 World Championship gold, Ingebrigtsen said, “I know that I’m better than silver, so I’m embarrassed being this good, but also this bad.” It’s these kind of statements that aren’t received fondly by his fellow athletes.
As every sportsperson knows, it’s easy to say you could have won, it’s far harder to actually do it.
And so any talk that he’s better than Kerr or Wightman is cheap – they’re the ones with world titles to their names.
At the end of the day, there’s one race that matters this year, and that’s the Olympic 1500m final on the 6thof August.
Kerr and Ingebrigtsen will be head-to-head and as they stand on the start-line, all the trash-talk will be redundant.
The pair are well aware of the significance of the Olympic final, which is what makes their head-to-heads in the lead-up to Paris 2024 so intriguing.
The mind is just as, if not more powerful than any muscle when it comes to becoming Olympic champion and any victories over your greatest rival in Olympic season will always be warmly welcomed.
I’ll be watching closely the first instalment of their head-to-head on Saturday, and I’ll be praying for yet more trash-talking in the aftermath.
And my message to the pair of them would be keep running fast, guys, but don’t forget to slag each other off too – there’s no greater spectator sport.
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