World Athletics Championships 2019: Team Ingebrigtsen – not your average Norwegian family

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By Mike Henson
BBC Sport
Some moments from the Ingebrigtsen family video collection are famous.
There was the time midway through last summer m final in Berlins Olympic Stadium when 17-year-old Jakob brother Henrik before storming into gold.
At 2017, their sibling Filip – younger than Henrik and elderly than Jakob – collapsed over the line in Londons Olympic Stadium as he became the first European to win a world 1500m trophy in 14 years.
Back in March, Henrik dived full length at a valiant, dramatic, if failed, try to steal the silver trophy in the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow, with Jakob.
Others are less well known.
Filmed more than a decade before, a camera shot opens with three Ingebrigtsen brothers in frame.
To the left, Henrik. To the best, Filip. The oldest of the familys seven kids.
A desk rounds, the teenagers, sporting matching tracksuits, review a national childhood event in.
Let us hear how it went in Oslo. Lets start with Kristoffer, states a voice off screen.
No, answers Kristoffer, glowering down the lens.
This was a fantastic trip. You didnt have any objectives, did you? Did you? Says the voice.
No, no more! States Kristoffer, growing annoyed.
The voice asks the boys to outline their intentions.
And Kristoffer? Following his sisters have had their state it enquires.
We shall make an effort not to come past, interjects Henrik.
I wont come last! Yells Kristoffer, aiming a elbow biceps.
It is a snapshot of sports family dynastys construction.
The European title that Jakob won at 2018 in Berlin had been passed to him from Filip, who was victorious two decades earlier. Henrik, who topped the podium was subsequently triumphed by him.
All 3 head for the weeks World Championships together with Jakob and Filip Henrik linking them in the 5,000 m, in and contenders for awards that are 1500m.
Is clear where this geyser of sporting success appeared from.
Certainly, growing up in Sandnes, a tiny town of around 75,000 facing to the North Seaand also the Ingebrigtsens competitive spirit was almost claustrophobic.
Kristoffer, Henrik along with the younger Martin and Jakob, could race each other getting in and out of the automobile, when they werent fighting for supremacy on bicycles at the swimming pool or around the trail.
Their sister Ingrid, 13, is now training as an athlete. William, for running sneakers on his ultrasound scanning jokingly measured up, is to begin a sports career, but remains only five.
Specialist sports family tradition is profound, however.
Their dad, Gjert – himself lifted in a household that is poor – is a logistics supervisor. Tone, their mother, owns a pair of salons.
Im not particularly interested in sport, Gjert tells BBC Sport.
We are a typical household with a great deal of children. We spent a great deal of time outside, skiing, hiking around, going to the mountains, cross-country skiing, exercising outdoors… but it is by coincidence. We never planned for anything.
That changed.
Because his sons sport has become more serious has Gjert. He is now manager, also agent and coach, dictating their event calendar, gruelling high-tempo training sessions and commercial deals.
It could be that I am fairly strict in the way I see things, he reflects.
The boys come to me and say:I want to be a European winner. I say:I wish to help you, I can assist you, but you need to do everything that I tell you.
If you do not, I cannot have a part of it. My aim is to find out all the children succeed, to achieve their objectives. Should their goals are reached by them, I hit mine.
I stand out from different parents. Im very demanding and its a kind of contract between me and the boys to help them be the best they can be but they must endure me after them daily each year.
By entering into that bargain, Jakob, Filip and Henrik have marketed themselves to athletics.
Filip recalls waking to do an hour roller ski – a version of cross-country ski – until he headed to college.
Henrik remembers asking his father to set up the mornings in addition to sessions in the afternoons. His father agreed, however, told them to not inform teachers unless they climbed worried that he was pushing them too hard.
Theres nothing about their devotion now. Every September, Gjert produces a training plan for the next 12 months, laminating it to stop any revisions. He is going to be trackside, barking orders and collating particulars of his sons advancement and recovery at a spreadsheet.
As part of a bid to tempt patrons to finance the brothers livelihood, Gjert overcame his sons reluctance and allowed Norwegian television to shoot on a reality series.
Team Ingebrigtsen catches the anxieties which continue together with the single-minded grip on his family of Gjert.
In a awkward spectacle, Filip accuses him of conducting adictatorship as a visit to southern Europe along with his girlfriend, who is sitting in the area, is quashed in favour of instruction.
In a different, eldest son Kristoffer – who would deny sports to get a career in economics and a family life of his – calls his own parentsdumb for having their seventh child, William, 25 years following his birth.
I think they are doing so rather than going back and working on connections with the kids they already have, he adds caustically.
Gjert gives as good as hes got.
He looks down the barrel at one point and states:I really dont need to be an angry man, I want to be a father.
However, when an angry man will deliver them their dreams, I will tolerate that sacrifice.
Hes not anywhere near the first sporting dad to intertwine his achievement with this of his children.
Andre Agassi, Mary Pierce and the Williams sisters are some of the the tennis stars who were driven to stardom by father figures, but there are rewards in addition to dangers.
As fans of motorsport in general, and Lewis Hamilton in particular, Jakob, Henrik and Filip will know the story of also his father and this five-time Formula 1 world champion.
After hed masterminded his rise Hamilton sacked his dad as his agent. The pair hardly spoke for the following two decades, but have gradually awakened, together with the motorist offered in July as saying that their connection is thebest weve ever had.
Would the ends of sporting careers justify the mean daddy act of Gjert?
Much of their impetus for his childrens sports comes from inside themselves and is currently adapting to the civilization of the household?
Theres absolutely no simple answer. There is no single answer.
He will always be my father. You can not take off that hat and say today I am your coach, says Filip. Its difficult, but I think, all in allit is much more positives than negatives. He provides more as a coach because he is also a father – that he constantly wants me to perform my best and now has my best interests at heart.
Jakobs take is somewhat different.
There are lots of ups and downs and positive and negatives about using a dad for a coach., he states. For different athletes I wouldnt recommend it since it is too much hard work and you also want a father outside of running.
For today, and our entire lives, he has been a coach because we have asked ourselves what is the most crucial – do we wish a household or do we would like to run fast?
Sons that run fast, relationships that hold. Gjert, who has written a book entitled How To Raise A World Champion, will hope both dreams are realised in Doha. And past.
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It has one of the widest ranges of choice in sport and throws to sprints or distance and cross country running.
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