Jake Wightman interview: 'Britain is the best middle-distance nation in the world' (2024)

Three’s a crowd, so the saying goes.

You would be forgiven for thinking that the world of men’s middle-distance running, specifically the 1500m, revolves around Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Great Britain’s Josh Kerr.

Only two men have beaten both in the same race since the start of 2021: Kenya’s Abel Kipsang, in the Tokyo Olympics 1500m semi-final, and Jake Wightman, in the 2022 1500m World Championship final. That was the first middle-distance global gold by a male Briton in 38 years.

Yet 30-year-old Wightman won’t be able to beat Ingebrigtsen and Kerr in Paris, because he won’t be in the same race. Wightman is racing the 800m, proof of his range and adaptability, amid three rollercoaster years, from relative anonymity — outside the UK — to world champion and multiple national-record holder, and cruelly back.

Wightman is speaking to The Athletic as part of his participation in a British Athletics-backed documentary, Path To Paris: The Hunt For Gold. Channel 4 partnered with British Athletics and The National Lottery, the latter having invested over £300million into UK athletics since 1997, to make the behind-the-scenes documentary.

It will follow Wightman and eight other athletes as they prepare for the Olympics. The first episode will air at 5pm (BST) on Saturday 20 July, with the first Paralympics episode on Sunday 25 August.

Ahead of Paris, Wightman told The Athletic he wants to prove two things: that Britain is “the best middle-distance nation in the world” and “you don’t have to be (a) one-event specialist”.

“It’s a cruel sport,” says Wightman. “When you’re going well, the highs are great, but it takes stuff away so quickly.”

He was on fire for 11 weeks between mid-June and early September 2022, winning a medal at three major competitions and setting three national (Scottish) records — 800m, 1000m and the mile. Wightman won World 1500m gold in Eugene, bronze in the same distance at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, and an 800m silver in Munich at the European Championships. That silver was so nearly a second gold, as he kicked hard on the home straight, but ran out of track and missed out by nine hundredths of a second.

His 2023 was then riddled with injuries. He raced once, a 3000m on January 8, and went to the World Championships as a pundit, not an athlete. He had to sit by and watch Kerr out-kick Ingebrigtsen for the 1500m title, taking his crown and snatching his automatic Olympic 1500m qualifying spot.

“I would have said, if you win Worlds in 2022, (then) you have a year where you’re injured the whole of 2023, I’d 100 per cent take that,” Wightman reflects. “But then as soon as you’re in that injury, you’re like, ‘Why me? This is terrible, I don’t deserve this’. A lot more people have been through worse than this and not had the same success to be able to justify it, whereas I’ve had that. So that kept me motivated.”

"Man, how quick you get forgotten, right? People forget you exist a bit. I went into the 2022 season under the radar and if that's exactly the same this year, then great."

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Jake Wightman after an impressive 1:44.10 in LA

Those 800m wheels could pose a major threat to Josh/Jakob. pic.twitter.com/hxGMWTXuY2

— Cathal Dennehy (@Cathal_Dennehy) May 18, 2024

“You take for granted when everything’s going well and you barely have to train, because you’ve done all the hard work and you’re running off confidence and fitness. Part of why I got injured in 2023 was because that (2022) season was so compact,” he says. Between the UK Diamond League meet in early June, to winning the infamous Fifth Avenue Mile in mid-September, Wightman raced 17 times in 99 days, including three championships.

Wightman describes championship racing as “more of a war of attrition, which is what I’m looking forward to”. In Paris, the 800m heats, semi-finals and finals are spread across four days, with the final on the evening of 10 August. “I get spanked in the Diamond League over 1500s regularly,” he says. “It doesn’t mean anything when it comes to champs because it’s racing — it’s not time-trialling. I pride myself on having that as my strength.

“I’ve always watched the 800s at champs and thought I’d have done alright because you see guys look a little bit tired and maybe have not got as much endurance through the rounds. My biggest strength is going to be that, because I’m racing under (1500) distance”.

Wightman has gone around the world to get back to race shape. In the first six months of 2024, he trained on four continents and raced on three, chasing Olympic standards: “South Africa at the start of the new year, then I went home for two days, to Boston (USA), straight from Boston to Aus (Australia) and then back home (UK). So, it was a bit chaotic, but that’s the most enjoyable bits of the year.

“This injury on my calf, the one before trials, the timing of it was terrible, but if I was to look at my whole year? Pretty flawless, and I’ve managed to make the team,” he says. He missed the British Championships with that injury, so could not qualify in the 1500m. He was a discretionary 800m pick — the athletics equivalent of a wildcard.

Wightman’s openness juxtaposes Ingebrigtsen and Kerr’s poker-style bluffing. Being filmed on the documentary was nothing new — he’s a YouTuber. “I started my YouTube because I didn’t feel there were many opportunities to showcase yourself as a person,” he says. “I’ve never been that interested in the numbers of training sessions and stats. I wanted to do a YouTube where you’re going to do that, because that is what we do each day, but there’s more around it that showcases more about you”.

“What makes me as good as I can be is being able to race up and down (distances),” says Wightman. “I don’t think you have to be event-specific,” though “I’m better at dropping down than stepping up.” Wightman ranks inside the top 10 British men over four distances in 2024, impressive for a comeback (Olympic) year where everyone chases qualifying times.

Middle-distance races are increasingly tactical. Kerr sits and kicks whereas Ingebrigtsen winds up, building speed throughout to prevent Kerr and others kicking. Wightman can win in various ways. Most often, like in Eugene, and in his Brussels Diamond League 800m win in 2022, he stays on the shoulder of the leader and attacks on the top bend, 200m out.

Does the 800m need a different game plan to the 1500m? “I don’t think the racing brain has to change, you have to be tactically astute,” says Wightman. “You just have a bit more processing time in a 15 than eight. If you panic, like when I was younger, I used to be obsessed with not losing a certain position or making a move at a certain point. If you do that, you’re acting on emotion rather than the calculated decision.”

Where he does show emotion is pride for Britain’s 800m/1500m generation. “It’s crazy how quickly it has generated into this just ridiculous place where Britain is, I think, biased, but the best middle-distance nation in the world.”

The inevitable follow-up: why? “It’s just a big snowball, isn’t it? Once you see people that have grown up in similar countries to you, (with) pretty normal lives, you believe you can do the same,” he says. “For me, it was (seeing) Chris O’Hare. Back in the day, he was making world finals when I was coming through, from my club as well (Edinburgh AC), and Josh’s (Kerr) club.

“It’s mad how quickly it’s happened. In 2016, the 1500, only Chris O’Hare and Charlie Grice went. They were the only two that could run a standard (Mo Farah did too, though raced the 3000, 5000 and 10,000). Now you’ve got like eight people potentially running standards and you’re fighting for spots.”

Incredible running from this little lad tonight. @joshk97 Champion of the World 👑 Made in Meadowbank. https://t.co/rKPrA1KwHZ

— Jake Wightman (@JakeSWightman) August 23, 2023

The Paris Olympics qualifying standards are the toughest ever. Compared to Rio, two cycles ago, the 800m has dropped 1.3 seconds for men and 2.2 seconds for women. For 1500m, men have had to run 2.7 seconds quicker and women 4.5 seconds.

Important context: this is an era of technologically boosted performances, with carbon-plated super-shoes and wavelights at Diamond League meets, which help pacemakers. Regardless, Britain’s depth is astounding. There were 21 Olympic standard times run in 2016 for Rio in the 800m and 1500m. Only three of those would have been fast enough for Paris, compared to the 16 which were actually achieved.

In three years since Tokyo, Wightman is one of four Britons with a major 800/1500m gold, along with Kerr, Keely Hodgkinson and Laura Muir. Then there is Jemma Reekie, Georgia Bell, Ben Pattinson and Neil Gourley, who have all medalled, and 17-year-old sensation Phoebe Gill — all will be in Paris. Wightman jokes that GB teams get incomprehensibly harder to make each year.

“That (generation) progressively gets better and better, to the point where you’re getting medals. When I won worlds (2022), I’m sure Josh was like, ‘Well, I beat him in the previous year at Olympics, therefore I can win worlds’. It doesn’t really stop. It’s a whole generation coming through — you hope they get inspired and can continue the legacy for as long as possible.”

Wightman had to sit and watch one of the fastest 800m races of all time at the start of July, in the Paris Diamond League. Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati became the third-fastest ever, winning in a world-leading 1:41.56 (only to run 1:41.46 in Monaco five days later), but for the first time, three men ran under 1:42 in the same race.

“It was hard because I just couldn’t believe that 1:41 was getting run by three people,” says Wightman. “I wasn’t in that race, so I don’t know what I’d have ran. There were guys that I’ve beaten often who ran 1:41, 1:42, so what’s to say I couldn’t have? If you looked at that and got crushed by it, I think you’re probably not going to go to the Olympic Games and do that well.

“You’ve got to believe that you could have done that. You get casualties through every single round (at the Olympics). Some of those guys that ran super quick might not make it through the heat or semi-final — you just don’t know what’s going to happen”.

Wightman knows and loves the purity of championship racing: no pacemakers, no wavelights, rounds to win before medals can even be thought of. The current world record (1:40.91) was set by David Rudisha in the final of London 2012, whereas Tokyo was a tactical race (1:45.06) — a second-lap shootout and the slowest men’s 800m Olympic final since Sydney 2000.

Wightman points out that he would not be the first Briton to win an Olympic middle-distance medal racing their secondary distance. “Look at Moscow (1980 Olympics) with (Sebastian) Coe and (Steve) Ovett — they both won each other’s distances (Coe won gold in 1500m, Ovett in 800m).

“I don’t think the goals have changed, even though I’m moving distance. It’s just a new challenge to do it over a different distance.”

(Top photo: Dustin Satloff via Getty Images)

Liam Tharme is one of The Athletic’s Football Tactics Writers, primarily covering Premier League and European football. Prior to joining, he studied for degrees in Football Coaching & Management at UCFB Wembley (Undergraduate), and Sports Performance Analysis at the University of Chichester (Postgraduate). Hailing from Cambridge, Liam spent last season as an academy Performance Analyst at a Premier League club, and will look to deliver detailed technical, tactical, and data-informed analysis. Follow Liam on Twitter @LiamTharmeCoach