Every morning the same old. Wake up. Wash your face. Prepare breakfast. Dress for work. Commute to your office or go back to the bedroom and open your laptop. While we unconsciously perform this routine, we scroll our feed catching up on what happened during the night somewhere else in the world. This morning the feed served us a short clip of Josh Kerr calling out Jakob Ingebrigtsen for not taking part at the Grand Slam Track, claiming he would be a “deer on ice” on the 800m during a Citius Mag podcast. We completely forgot about this rivalry after the Paris Olympics. Kerr’s comment lived with us while we brushed our teeth. Kerr has always been the most vocal of the two in this rivalry, even though Jakob is the best runner of the two and shows minimal interest in this feud. Our mind kept scanning for other running rivalries but nothing came to our mind. Time was running and we had to log in to our laptops - sigh. We kept thinking.
In a sport that historically lacks rivalries, Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen generated some excitement in 2024 hyping up fans - but how many? - ahead of the Paris Olympics. Kerr’s latest statement wants to revitalize this rivalry ahead of 2025 and the launch of the Grand Slam Track to whom Ingebrigtsen decided not to take part. The Grand Slam Track was created with the objective of bringing new life to the stagnant sport of track running - while field can be considered dead at this point, we need a miracle. The hype around elite track and road running is limited to World Championships and Olympics, the only moments when the sport transcends its niche and reaches mainstream fans. How do you reach these fans? This is the question right now, not just for track, but also for road and trail running. Running popularity is at its peak, but runners are not often fans of the sport at the apex of its pyramid. Rivalries can be the answer. Sports like tennis were able to land among mainstream fans thanks to them. Rivalries don’t exist in running due to the lack of mainly two factors: big personalities and repetition.
Some of you might disagree about the lack of rivalries in running. For a whole morning we thought of other rivalries in track and road running but only Usain Bolt came to our mind. Not enough. So we asked the Internet. We started from the latest competition, the Paris Olympics. The main rivalries teased ahead of the event were underwhelming. Eliud Kipchoge vs Kenenisa Bekele was the first. The two faced each other 4 times before the Olympics (the last in 2018) with Kipchoge winning all. Both were at their last dance and well beyond their prime in Paris, ending up 34th and DNF respectively. Sha’carri Richardson vs Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce felt more like a proper rivalry with Richardson leading 5-2 entering the Olympics. But nothing to scream about. Only two running rivalries were selected in the article. One potential rivalry missing from the article was Femke Bol vs Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone on 400H, but when analyzing the results the American leads 3-0, so quite unbalanced.
We decided to look further to other media and the Wikipedia page dedicated to sport rivalries that has an athletics section. Of the 21 rivalries included in this section: 3 are not running related, 6 are from more than 40 years ago or lasted less than 2 years. Of the remaining 12, Usain Bolt is featured in 3: Gay, Gatlin and Blake. This is how close we get to a rivalry. Bolt was the face of sprinting for many years and a true entertainer playing on the same field of celebrities and pop stars. He brought sprinting to the mainstream fans. He carried these rivalries with his personality and performances. He dominated all of them: 3-1 vs Gay, 8-2 vs Gatlin, 6-2 vs Blake. Quoting the tennis player and former number 1 in the world, Andy Roddick, about his rivalry with Roger Federer “Can we consider this a rivalry if I get my ass kicked all the time?”. Roddick ended his career with a 3-21 score against Federer, losing four Grand Slam finals. Rivalries can’t be one way, otherwise they lack the competitive tension and retain just the talking. This is what we are seeing with Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen. Considering the 1,500m, Kerr’s best distance, Ingebrigsten leads 14-3. All of this while being top class on the 5,000m and keeping an eye on the road recently. The results justify the lack of interest in this feud by Ingebrigtsen.
Other rivalries in the Wikipedia section suffer from lack of entertainment value and balance. Veronica Campbell-Brown Vs Allyson Felix looks like a proper rivalry with the first dominating on the 100m (10-2) but losing on the 200m (6-10) during a time span of 12 years. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce vs Elaine Thompson-Herah (200m) 3-2. LaShawn Merritt vs Kirani James (400m) 8-14. Asafa Powell vs Justin Gatlin (100m): 5-14. Dayron Robles vs Liu Xiang (110H): 4-7. How many mainstream fans can recognize any of these athletes at the peak of their careers?
Personalities can’t be built on the track or at the gym. They can be created by media and communication managers, but they are intangible and might not interest the fans as expected. The opposite of the brutal reality of time trials intrinsic in the sport. There isn’t a magic workout to build a punchy personality. Rivals can be both introverted and friends with each other. Or the opposite. Introvert or extrovert. Talkative or silent. In the past 20 years, only Usain Bolt was “big” enough to move the sport's popularity forward. Many sprinters tried to emulate him in the past 10 years, with modest results. There is no secret formula.
Let’s take tennis for example, an individual sport that relies on rivalries. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were a perfect match in the late 00s and 10s. They had different styles of play - something that can’t be translated to running unfortunately - and on-court behaviors, creating the perfect clash. Their rivalry energized tennis after the 90s and brought the sport to the next level. In 2024, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz created the next big rivalry showcasing different personalities and style of play. All these 4 players had positive personalities and were friends off the court, the opposite of what the sport had in the 80s with aggressive players like John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. There is no template for rivalries.
Together with personalities, rivalries are built on repetition. The more athletes compete against each other, the more fans will be excited. Facing each other is not enough. Winners should alternate to avoid loss of interest and maintain balance. Ultra running lacks of rivalries is partly due to low repetition due to the lack of a major race circuit where all the top athletes compete every year - other factors play into it too, we talked about it here.
Repetition needs to happen on big stages. Medals or big financial prizes should be at stake to get the best out of the athletes and create legendary sport moments. Michael Jordan’s legacy was built on the NBA Finals against Stockton and Malone’s Utah Jazz. The Grand Slam Track aims to create this environment outside of the World Championships and Olympics, that occur on a sparse cadence, believing the Diamond League is an outdated format. Will the new format create enough big moments to build credible rivalries?
For how simple it is to point out what running lacks, finding a solution is hard. Social media brought a new lever to athletes to build their own media personality and narrative. This still remains an unexplored opportunity because the content created by athletes is standardized and individualistic. The athlete is defined only by his training, workouts and PBs and not in relation to others. Me. Me. Me. And never, me in relation to others. What Kerr is attempting to do is exactly this: affirming his relevance into the sport in relation to Ingerbritsen, a generational athlete and one of the faces of the Norway athletics revolution. If Kerr will improve his performance and compete on longer distances, we might witness a real rivalry. Will anyone watch running because of this rivalry? Will we remember this rivalry in 10 years? How many non-running fans recognize Kerr and Ingerbrigtsen at the supermarket?
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