World Athletics Indoor Championships: Jakob Ingebrigtsen has history in his sights in Belgrade

What a year it's been for Jakob Ingebrigtsen.

The Norwegian 21-year-old made good on his immense promise with Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020, winning one of the races of the Games in a new Olympic record time of 3:28.32.

In that race, lining up next to Kenya's 2019 World Champion Timothy Cheruiyot - an athlete he had never beaten in 10 races before the Olympic final - Ingebrigtsen sat comfortably in second for the majority of the race with Cheruiyot setting a ferocious pace at the front.

But with 100m to go, the Norwegian stormed past his Kenyan rival, driving towards to line to win the race in a time never before seen at the Olympics.

If Tokyo 2020 felt like a coming of age story, his progression since sets up the prospect of a mouthwatering race at the World Athletics Indoor Championships that take place this weekend in Belgrade.

It has also had people conceiving the previously unthinkable. Could this precocious talent who is barely into his twenties threaten a record that has stood since 1998 - the 1500m world mark set by legendary Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj?

From Tokyo glory to a new world record

In just his first race of 2022, Ingebrigtsen proved that he is still in the form of his life.

Lining up in an indoor 1500m race in Lievin, France, he set a blistering time of 3:30.60 to break the existing indoor world record by a full 0.46 seconds.

It was the first world record Ingebrigtsen has set in his career, but the possibility for him to go even faster could even come as soon as this weekend.

"I basically wanted to do the best time possible but breaking a world record is a dream come true so I'm very happy," he said a day after the historic race in February.

"It's my first so I'll remember this evening for a very long time and I hope that in the future I will beat other records."

Perhaps more than the record itself, it is the manner of the record that set tongues wagging. Fulfiling a pre-race prediction that he would run faster in the second half of the race than the first, Ingebrigtsen controlled the tempo before setting a time of 55.52 on his final lap.

“I like to finish strong, so I think that’s nice for the crowd as well and also really nice for me to speed up going into the finish," he explained. "So that’s always a great feeling.”

The question remains, how much does he have in reserve?

The phantom of El Guerrouj

Looming large over the conversation of just how fast Ingebrigtsen can go is Morocco's middle distance legend Hicham El Guerrouj.

Like the Wavelight technology that now often lights the side of tracks to signal the record times runners need to keep pace with, El Guerrouj's 1998 1500m mark has been a constant reminder of the heights athletes need to reach in order to achieve greatness.

Ingebrigtsen's Olympic record of 3:28.32 is still some two and a half seconds shy of El Guerrouj's astonishing 3:26 flat, set some 24 years ago. However, his history-making world indoor record shows that he is making great strides towards the Moroccan's fastest-ever outdoor time.

In a similar manner to the outdoor 1500m record, the indoor record stood for 22 years until it was beaten by Ethiopia's Samuel Tefera in 2019 and subsequently improved again by Ingebrigtsen last month. The owner of that original longstanding record? El Guerrouj.

Now Norway's middle distance maestro has time on his side as he seeks to chase down the outdoor mark of El Guerrouj, but in order to do that he will need to turn his trademark rapid final laps into consistently fast splits.

If he can achieve that goal, who knows what the future holds for athletics' fastest rising star. The world - and history - is at his feet.

The World Athletics Indoor Championships men's 1500m final takes place on Sunday 20 March at 18:35pm.