In the men’s 1500m, the semi-finals will happen. Two days ago, the first round of a race happened. It was not easy, but there were no major surprises. You can see its results here and in this post we will talk about what other runners who stayed in line might be able to surprise us with.
Men’s 1500m running. Who’s not starting?
The last man who has beaten Cheruiyot in international competition is also the penultimate world champion Elijah Manangoi. But he has been disqualified before for missing a test and cannot break his training partner’s winning streak anytime soon.
Taoufik Makhloufi was second in the last World Championships, but he has not been in any other official competitions since then. He also announced that his injuries will not allow him to be able to compete in Tokyo and try to win 4 Olympics medals.
Mohamed Katir’s career was not well-known before this year. But now he has done a lot of new things and improved his personal bests. He got second place in Monaco with a Spanish record of 3:28.76. Besides that, he only made the Olympic list for the 5,000 m and there was no change on that score.
Kamar Etyang was not famous before this season, but he got second place in the Kenyan race to qualify for the Olympics. This is good because Kenya is a Category A country, so each athlete needs to have 3 out-of-competition doping tests in 10 months before the Olympics. But Kamar couldn’t do these tests because he couldn’t leave his country. So his trips abroad will be postponed until after the Olympics.
Key talking points
Two Kenyans, Charles Simotwo and Abel Kipsang, beat Cheruiyot to qualify for the Olympics. However, Simotwo has not won outside Kenya this season. On the other hand, Kipsang has been third in most of his races but is doing worse this season.
But those weren’t the most famous events, and his best time was 3:32.68. It happened in French Marseille 10 days before qualifying in Nairobi.
The Olympic qualifiers finish in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi
If you want a chance to beat Cheruiyot, the first person to stand out is Ingebrigtsen from Norway. He was unhappy with 4th place at the World Championships in Doha when he was 19 years old. After that, he became very good and established himself as the best runner in the world after Cheruiyot. This time he did not try for a double race and missed out on 5000m. It looks like things are looking up for him to overtake Cheruiyot this time around.
But for now, the score of their head-to-head encounters is 0:12. If Jakob wins in the Olympics it will be very surprising. But another problem for him is a cold he picked up in late June and missed starts in Oslo and Stockholm. There’s also a chance that he won’t even finish 3rd place in Monaco. Still, with a 3rd place at the Diamond League stage with a time of 3:30 minutes, this looks good for someone who has had health problems recently.
At the last World Championships, two British people unexpectedly finished 5th and 6th. They have been able to get better since then. That is because one was able to run 3:30 in Monaco, and the other ran a 800-meter race that lasted 1:46.3 minutes with a lap in 55.8 seconds and 50.5 seconds total time for a total of 3:40.72 minutes.
We haven’t seen them in the Diamond League stages (or many other races) this year. So it’s hard to predict anything. We shouldn’t be surprised if one of them ends up in the top three. Even third place Jake Heyward.
