Belgrade 2022: Kipsang on the mend as Ingebrigtsen, Tefera stand in way

Having missed out on a global medal in Tokyo, Abel Kipsang is looking to make amends and be on the podium even as he faces tough opposition at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. 

A fourth-place finisher in Tokyo, Kipsang begins his hunt for a major championship medal on Saturday 19 March, at 2.15 pm competing in the men's 1500m heat four. 

The 25-year old headlines his heat as the only sub 3:30 athlete on the list and having set the fastest time this season at 3:34.57. He will look to finish in the top two for an automatic slot to the final set for Sunday at 20.35 pm. 

Kipsang has showed impressive indoor credentials when taking victory in Birmingham last month in 3:34.57. A recent 1:45.84 clocking for 800m outdoors in Nairobi signals he’s got the speed to go for gold.

While the Olympian is poised to have a relatively easy qualifying round, baring calamity, he faces tough opposition in the subsequent race. 

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Two global champions are on a collision course with Olympic gold medallist Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway looking to depose Ethiopia’s Samuel Tefera as the world indoor champion. The two remain Kipsang's biggest threat. 

Based on their recent clash in Lievin, where Ingebrigtsen broke Tefera’s world indoor 1500m record, clocking 3:30.60, the pressure and expectation will rest with the 21-year-old Norwegian. 

That Lievin race was Ingebrigtsen’s sole outing of the indoor season and he looked majestic as he bounded away from Tefera over the final 300 metres after the pacemaker stepped aside.

Meawhile, World Relay Championships 2x2x400m silver medalist Naomi Korir and her 800m counterpart in Belgrade Eglay Nalyanya take to the track from 1.45 pm in heat three and two respectively as they face formidable opposition in their quest fir a final berth. 

Nalyanya has her work cut out in the heats as she faces Ajee Wilson and race favourite Keely Hodgkinson, with only the top two gaining automatic qualification to the final set for Sunday. Naomi is equally in the deep end as she is the only runner in her hit yet to dip under two minutes in their PB. 

In the absence of Athing Mu, the fellow teen sensation who beat her to Olympic gold in Tokyo seven months ago, Hodgkinson will start as the woman to beat over four laps of the Stark Arena. 

Hodgkinson heads to the race with the world’s fastest time in 2022, also the fastest since 2002.

At the Muller Indoor Grand Prix World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold event in Birmingham on 19 February, Hodgkinson destroyed a world-class field with a stunning victory in 1:57.20, breaking Jemma Reekie’s British indoor record and moving to sixth on the world indoor all-time list.

The 2021 Diamond League winner’s only other indoor race this year has been a 52.42 400m PB as runner up to Jessie Knight at the British Indoor Championships.

The impressive field, however, is not short of potential contenders. It includes eight of the 10 fastest women in 2022 and, notably, all four who have cracked two minutes since the turn of the year: Hodgkinson, Jamaican Natoya Goule, Uganda’s world champion Halimah Nakaayi and Australia’s Catriona Bisset (1:59.46).

Nobody will be fuelled with greater motivation than Ajee. The US runner took silver in Portland in 2016 and again in Birmingham in 2018. She failed to make the cut for the Olympic final in Tokyo, bowing out at the semi-final stage.

Her best this year is only 2:01.38 but she has won all four of her 800m races and has also clocked a brisk 1:25.29 for 600m.

Additional reporting by World Athletics