Reigning world and Olympic 5000m champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen will miss this month’s Diamond League meetings in Poland and Belgium as he bids to recover from injury in time for next month’s World Championships.
The 24-year-old was set to run in the 1500m events in Silesia and Brussels on 16 and 22 August, but he has pulled out after and previously missing both the Ostrava Golden Spike and Oslo Bislett Games in June as well as the London Diamond League meet in July.
He last competed at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing in March, where he won gold in both the 1500m and 3,000m events.
Ingebrigtsen’s spokesperson Espen Skoland said that the Norwegian is recovering from an Achilles issue, adding that “he is still working on getting rid of the injury” and “would very much have liked to be able to participate”.
Though he has resumed training – spending recent weeks training in St Moritz, Switzerland – his absence from the Diamond League meetings means that his participation in September’s World Championships is now in doubt, though the reigning 5000m will no doubt be desperate to defend his title in Tokyo. Though no official timeline has been provided for his return, the Norwegian has previously said that his goal was to compete in Japan.
Ingebrigtsen has qualified for the 5000m eventas a reigning champion, while he also landed a place in the 1500m event with a time of 3:27.83 at last year’s Lausanne Diamond League. Though he won gold in the former in 2023, he came second to long-time rival Josh Kerr in the 1500m in Budapest.
The World Championships begin on 13 September and will be held in Tokyo, with stars including Noah Lyles, Armando Duplantis and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone competing to for world titles at the National Stadium.
