PARIS — There is supposed to be one Olympic men’s 1,500-meter race every four years. But Tuesday night, there were 12: A different one in the mind of each man on the track at Stade de France.
In the moments before the race began, Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the defending gold medalist, already saw himself as the winner. If confidence were cookies, Ingebrigtsen would weigh three thousand pounds. The 1,500 is a highly strategic race—long enough to require a well-thought-out plan, short enough that one miscalculation can ruin a race. Ingebrigtsen went out at a world-record pace—and the world record is 26 years old.
