BRITAIN’S JOSH KERR produced a stunning sprint to the line to claim gold and inflict world championship defeat on Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1500m final at the World Athletics Championships.
Kerr, who won Olympic bronze in Tokyo when Ingebrigtsen claimed gold, turned on the afterburners down the home straight in Budapest to hold off the Norwegian and win in 3:29.38.
It was deja vu for Ingebrigtsen who had to settle for silver, just as he did at the world championships in Eugene last year when he was beaten by another Briton, Jake Wightman, in a similar close finish.
Another Norwegian, Narve Gilje Nordas, took the bronze medal in 3:29.68, three hundredths of a second behind Ingebrigtsen.
Norway did belatedly get their gold on Wednesday evening as Karsten Warholm extended his dominance in the men’s 400m hurdles by digging deep to win his third world title.
Olympic champion Warholm clocked 46.89 second for gold, with Kyron McMaster of the British Virgin Islands taking silver in 47.34.
American Rai Benjamin claimed bronze in 47.56 as defending world champion Alison Dos Santos of Brazil hit the third-last hurdle and saw his chances of a podium place evaporate, finishing fifth.
Elsewhere, Olympic champion Katie Moon of the United States and Australian Nina Kennedy shared gold after tying in a nail-biting women’s world pole vault final.
Kennedy and Moon, who won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021 and took the world title in Eugene last year under her maiden name of Nageotte, both vaulted a best of 4.90m and could not be separated on countback as both had one failure at that height.
After a brief chat between the two competitors and the officials, it was decided that both would be world champions.
The vaulters embraced, surrounded by photographers, and to roars of approval from the near-capacity crowd at the National Athletics Centre.
The outcome echoed the men’s high jump at the Tokyo Olympics when Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy were allowed to share the gold medal with the same height of 2.37m.
