Tokyo 2025 Preview, #16: Jake Wightman wants a good race in Tokyo

Tokyo 2025 Preview, #16: Jake Wightman wants a good race in Tokyo

When Jake Wightman overtook Jacob Ingebrigtsen to win the world championship 1500 meters in Eugene 2022, it seemed that the world was his oyster. Little did he realise the two years of utter frustration were going to follow. Injury prevented him from defending his title in Budapest 2023. Light seemed to be emerging from a dark tunnel in 2024, when despite further injury problems, he gained selection for the Paris Olympics – albeit in the 800. Then in literally his last rep, in his last training session before Paris, injury struck again.

Speaking to a number of British track and field writers last week, he explained the frustrations of the last three years and what kept him going in the dark days: “A lot of it is just the sense of feeling like I’m not done. And I don’t look back on the years I’ve had with injuries and stuff like that like. If you isolate anyone of them, they’re pretty grim. But I had a whole spell of about nine years before that, where I didn’t actually get many injuries and that culminated in winning a world title. Some would say if that was the high point and it was going to followed by a couple low points, then you would take it. You could say 2022 was pretty brutal. My body did 3 champs. Therefore, I’m paying the price for that now. And then Paris was a lot tougher just because it was the Olympic Games with the bump in the road, I thought I was able to go for the 1500, having to go for the 800 and then to not even go for the 800 because of the injury at the last minute. That was a tough one and it’s been it’s been mentally hard for me. I didn’t struggle as much in those years when I was injured, as I have done this year because I feel as though this is when I have got back racing. It’s been a lot more stressful than I thought it was going to be just because I have had two years of not being able to do it properly, I don’t think I appreciated that. It is a big deal to be back racing fit and healthy and it comes with its own stresses away from being injured which I’ve had to like reassess and deal with and just realise that that I’m not going into Tokyo off the back of the 2022 season where I won World Champs. I’m going into this season and these champs off the back of having two years where I have had problems and injuries so it’s…