Britain's 1500m world champion Jake Wightman: “I don’t think we’ll really know how good this era is until it’s done”

When the Track & Field World Championships 1500m competition began at Hayward Field in Eugene on Saturday 16 July 2022, the announcer calling out Team GB’s Jake Wightman’s was a familiar one.

Wightman’s father Geoff has been a mainstay on the tannoys at the Olympics and World Champs since his son was a teenager, and will once again be the voice of these Track & Field Worlds in Oregon.

“My dad has worked in athletics my whole life,” Wightman explained in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com. “He was my coach since I was about age 15 and then he’s done the stadium announcing at every Olympics since 2012 and then all the World Champs since Beijing 2015.”

While Wightman says “I drown it out” when asked whether he listens to his dad during races, he might have heard his father's experienced words ringing in his head as he stunned the field in Oregon.

As well as being his son’s coach, Geoff is a former marathoner who competed for Great Britain at the Commonwealth Games in 1990. Jake's mother Susan Tooby was an Olympian who ran the marathon at the 1988 Games in Seoul. And his aunt, Angela Tooby competed in the 10,000m at the same Olympics in Republic of Korea, having won bronze at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh two years earlier.

So while there was no shortage of inspiration when Wightman decided to become a runner, there also wasn’t as much surprise as you’d imagine when he began to excel in the sport.

“I was the third one in my family to go to the Olympic Games," he said with a smile. “So it was something that I suppose wasn’t as big a deal for my family because my mum could always one-up me before then about having gone, because I never had quite done what she’d done.”

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Taking inspiration from the greats

It’s not only blood relatives that have inspired Wightman as a runner. It’s also a golden era of British runners, led in the early and mid-1980s by back-to-back Olympic 1500m gold medallist Sebastian Coe, Moscow 1980 800m gold medallist Steve Ovett and Los Angeles 1984 1500m silver medallist Steve Cram.

“Out of the three, I grew up idolising Seb [Coe] just because he was coached by his dad, went to Loughborough University where I went, and I just thought his style of racing was most how I’d like to run,” said Wightman, who is a self-confessed "nerd" when it comes to British athletics history.

And it’s not just watching old film of the British greats that inspires the 28-year-old. From his earliest days in sport, he has had the chance to rub shoulders with some of those revered athletes.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to know Steve Cram since I was really young. I went to school with his son,” he said.

“So you kind of take it for granted being around these guys. It was only when the era of YouTube came up that you can probably watch their races and I think for any young athlete, studying what the best have done is a great way to bring your own racing on.”

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“I don’t think we’ll really know how good this era is until it’s done,” Wightman says of a group of British athletes who are excelling on the international stage, including at last year's Olympic Games in Tokyo.

In Japan, a 19-year-old Keely Hodgkinson won silver in the women’s 800, Laura Muir took home silver in the women’s 1500m and Josh Kerr - an athlete Wightman has trained with and raced against since he was a child - won bronze in the men’s 1500m.

Wightman also made the final of the Tokyo 1500m but could only manage to finish 10th. It's a result he describes as “a little bit disappointing”, with more than a hint of understatement in his voice.

It was a step backwards from his experience two years earlier at the World Championships in Doha, where he ended the competition just off the podium in fifth place, even though he had suffered a hamstring tear just two weeks prior.

“They called the reserve athlete to say that they might need to fly out,” Wightman recalled, looking back on the nervous days before those Worlds. “I spent 10 days cross training and then I had four days running with one session, so my expectations going into it were pretty low. But it’s probably a blessing in disguise that I rested. You don’t need to do too much training and fifth isn’t what I expected.

“But from there, with Tokyo last year and the Worlds this year, I think that’s the benchmark.”

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The changing landscape of the 1500m

Tokyo 2020 acted as a wake-up call for Wightman. After previously relying on slower-paced races where he could turn on his formidable speed over the final 400m, the second-fastest 1500m runner in British history has had to overhaul his training to cope with the new demands of the current era of running.

“My main strength has been over 800m as well as 1500, and probably between 2012 and 2016 that was perfect,” he explained.

“They were slow races that were probably won in a quick last lap, which is exactly how I’d love them to be. But the era has changed.

“We’ve had Tim Cheruiyot who won in Doha and then Jakob Ingebrigtsen obviously won it last year. They just time trial it hard from the front, so you don’t really get the chance to show you’ve got that speed.”

Now Wightman concentrates on stamina as much as speed in his workouts, doing “a lot of training I don’t like” including indoor 3,000m races (“grimmer than any race I’ve done before!”) and a lot more 5k training.

“I’m hoping it means I can get through the rounds a little stronger. To run quick each round and then run your quickest in the final, you just need to be as strong as possible with great endurance.”

The change in approach seems to be paying great dividends for Wightman, who won his first British championships just two weeks before these Worlds.

“It’s a great confidence booster coming into a World Champs being a national champion. I’m just glad to get it ticked off but the main thing was to qualify for here, so just getting on the plane was a big thing for me,” he said before jumping on the plane for the Usa.

He had the chance to go one better and entered the pantheon of British greats in style. He stunned the 1500m field on 19 July as his father Geoff commentated.