Jakob Ingebrigtsen has an individual medal haul on the world stage which most countries would be envious of.
But the Norwegian athlete had never won World Indoor Athletics Championships gold before Saturday night in Nanjing, an official report said.
Over 3000m, the 24-year-old added the only global title to have eluded him and now has every chance of doubling that tally on Sunday over half the distance.
Should he achieve that feat, he will become the only male athlete in the history of these championships to do so other than Haile Gebrselassie, who pulled off his own distance double all the way back in 1999.
But this wasn’t the procession that some had anticipated, Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi, who had been the runner-up to Ingebrigtsen when he broke the 3000m world record so impressively in the wake of the Olympics, pushing him right until the home straight in a thrilling finish.
None of the three men who denied him a medal in the 1500m at those Paris Games last summer have made the trip to China, with him publicly taking umbrage at their absence in the lead-up to the event.
Any suggestion that he might potentially be feeling Friday’s heat of the 1500m in his legs in this final were not apparent from the outset.
And despite clearly being the marked man, he looked comfortable slotted towards the back of the front five for much of the 3000m final as his rivals tried, at points, but ultimately failed to find a way to unsettle him.
All credit to Aregawi in particular, who kicked as Ingebrigtsen moved off the kerb with three laps to go in a bid to take the lead and set the tempo. At the bell, he tried to go again only to be again fended off.
Undeterred, he sensibly and successfully saved his final attack for the final bend despite having been outdone by faster finishers in race finales in the past.
His closest challenger finally failed down the home straight having to settle for silver as Australia’s Ky Robinson rounded off the podium.
Ingebrigtsen has talked about having “a responsibility to see what the human race can possibly do”. For all his athletics prowess, however, the question mark remains whether he can pull off the double with his rivals for that having had 24 hours and one less race in which to rest up.
But he is comfortably the runner of his generation and has previous experience of pulling off track doubles having successfully doubled up at these two distances at the past three European Indoor Championships, including earlier this month, as well as doing so at the outdoor European Championships over 1500m and 5000m.
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