After visiting four continents, covering 14 races, and seeing seven different drivers win, the paddock enjoys a well-deserved rest during the summer shutdown. This mandatory 14-day break, during which teams are prohibited from making any changes to the car’s performance, is a crucial period for reflection and planning. It’s a time when teams can’t do any work on the car’s performance, but it’s hard to imagine some won’t reflect on their performance ahead of the final 10 races.

The expectation heading into 2024 was that Max Verstappen would continue to dominate. Instead, the Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes drivers have won races this year (Lewis Hamilton is the only two-time 2024 race winner out of those six competitors). McLaren is closing the gap to Red Bull thanks to the consistency of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and the fight at the top of the grid is tight.

There have been plenty of surprises up and down the grid compared to this time last season. Here are our top 10 drivers from the first 14 races of the season. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comment section at the bottom.

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It hasn’t quite been the dominant Max Verstappen of 2022 or 2023 when F1 Sundays became routine: lights out, wait 90 minutes, and hear the Dutch national anthem. Yet he has remained at the very top of his game, making up for Red Bull’s slip in performance compared to its rivals.

The early phase of the season followed the well-worn script, as Verstappen won at a canter at Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Japan and China. But since the start of F1’s European season, he’s been forced to dig deep and produce some terrific displays to keep winning. Winning at Imola and Barcelona despite the threat of Lando Norris in the McLaren required Verstappen to be at his very best; he didn’t miss a beat. Even a race like Spa, where he could only finish fourth, took a mighty effort from 11th on the grid.

It hasn’t been a spotless season so far by any means. Verstappen’s clash with Norris in Austria and his move on Lewis Hamilton in Hungary showed that his aggressive edge, not required in the past two years, is still there—not always to his benefit.

Despite Red Bull’s recent performance dip and McLaren’s emergence, Verstappen has extended his points lead in five of the last six races. He may no longer have the outright quickest car, but Verstappen remains remarkably hard to beat.

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(GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)

(GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)

Five seasons, more than 100 grands prix, nearly 1,900 days. Lando Norris waited a long time for his first F1 win since joining the grid in 2019, finally coming at the Miami GP this year.

Since that moment, the McLaren driver has taken the battle to Verstappen. The talent is evident, and the car is strong. He should have more than one win to his name this year. There’s been a few close calls, like at the Spanish GP when he felt “I should have won. I f—d the start.” More recently, he also dropped at the start of the Belgian GP after starting fourth, losing multiple spots after misjudging the exit of Turn 1.

“I’ve given away a lot of points over the last three or four races just because of stupid stuff—mistakes and bad starts,” he said after the race. “I don’t know why. It’s just silly things, it’s not even difficult stuff. It’s just Turn 1, trying to stay out of trouble, trying to make sure there’s a gap and not get hit.”

Norris can fight for wins, but small mistakes and iffy starts have proved costly, points-wise. Only 78 points separate the McLaren driver and Verstappen. Because the Dutchman operates at a high level, these little details matter.

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(Qian Jun/Xinhua via Getty Images)

(Qian Jun/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Watching Piastri this year, you’d be astonished to learn this is only his second season on the F1 grid. The Australian takes everything thrown at him gracefully and calmly, even as McLaren’s surge puts him amid a constructors’ title fight going into the remainder of the season.

Piastri hasn’t quite been on Norris’s level this season, trailing 11-3 in their qualifying head-to-head, but the gap is typically marginal. He was the only driver capable of challenging Charles Leclerc through the Monaco weekend, ending up P2, and finally got the victory he deserved in Hungary despite McLaren’s best efforts to make a mess of the situation.

McLaren’s belief that it has the best driver lineup in F1 has been justified so far this year. We always knew how good Norris was, but Piastri’s ability to duke it out at the front was something we had yet to see in F1. Now, it’s abundantly clear just how good he is. Piastri’s mistakes are rare, and if he can find that extra tenth, then it may be a more even split between him and Norris through the closing 10 races.

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(ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images)

(ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images)

In true Charles Leclerc fashion, the Monegasque’s season has been one of dizzying highs and gutting lows, rarely leveling out into any sustained, consistent form. Not that it’s entirely his fault.

The emotional home victory in Monaco, delivered through the tears in his eyes in the closing laps as he achieved the childhood dream he shared with his father, looks set to kickstart Leclerc’s season. Ferrari seemed to be back in contention at the front, building on a steady start to the year.

However, the upgrades on the SF-24 car have yet to work as anticipated. Even if the team can see more performance in the car, it is a) not enough relative to Mercedes, McLaren or Red Bull and b) hard to harness, particularly with a return to the bouncing for the first time in years.

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Leclerc admitted after Silverstone that the recent races had been “worse than a nightmare,” but he has continued to perform. His lap at Spa was a significant achievement. He took pole after Verstappen’s penalty before finishing third in what is currently the fourth-fastest car. Leclerc remains Ferrari’s best asset, even if luck has not been with him recently.

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(Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

(Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

This is George Russell’s strongest season, with fewer mistakes than in 2023.

Once again, the year didn’t start smoothly for Mercedes, which seemed to still struggle with its car concept. However, it brought an upgrade to Monaco that came alive at the following race in Canada, where George Russell put the W15 on pole position.

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But after leading for 20 laps and holding an advantage, the Briton lost it on the straight when Norris breezed past and to Verstappen moments later when Russell misjudged the final chicane. Later in the race, as the track was drying following some rain, Russell was hunting down the lead again. Still, he went wide at Turn 8, allowing Norris to slip past him again for second.

“For me, it was just one too many mistakes at key moments that cost us a shot of fighting with these two towards the end of the race,” Russell said after securing his first 2024 podium finish. Mistakes do happen, but drivers need to be able to seize a moment when the opportunity presents itself. Russell had the chance to do so two races later at Austria. When Verstappen and Norris tangled, the Mercedes driver zipped past into the lead and held off Piastri, giving Mercedes its first win since the 2022 season.

Even with a few mistakes this season, Russell has stayed ahead of his teammate, outqualifying and finishing ahead of Lewis Hamilton in most races. But he has endured heartbreaking moments, like a DNF at Silverstone due to a suspected water system issue and disqualification after winning the Belgian GP due to an underweight car.

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(Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

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(Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

Carlos Sainz’s season has been an absolute roller coaster.

It started before Bahrain when news broke that Hamilton would join the Prancing Horse in 2025, throwing Sainz’s F1 future into question. This question followed him throughout the first half of the season, and the speculation ran rampant. It wasn’t until after Spa that he announced he’d join Williams next season. But on top of the rumor mill, the Spaniard missed a race after being sidelined with appendicitis in Saudi Arabia, with Ollie Bearman competing in his place.

In Spa, Sainz admitted that “it hasn’t been easy having to deal with, first of all, having to miss a race, but mainly with all the discussions about my future going on in the background.” But he still has shown up and performed decently well, considering the circumstances. Sixteen days after surgery, Sainz won the Australian GP, capitalizing on the moment after Verstappen retired early.

Ferrari had a competitive car early in the season, but Sainz’s results began falling away as others progressed more than the Italian crew. But in the teammate battle, Leclerc outqualified Sainz, 8-5, and finished ahead of the Spaniard, 7-5, in races they’ve been classified.

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(Peter Fox/Getty Images)

(Peter Fox/Getty Images)

Seventh may seem harsh. After all, Hamilton has won two of the last three races and ended a two-and-a-half-year-old win drought. But this hasn’t been his finest season.

Russell has remained the quicker of the two Mercedes drivers, leading their qualifying head-to-head 10-4. He’s also 7-4 up on Hamilton in races, and both have been classified.

Hamilton has been open about his struggles, even as the Mercedes car has improved, admitting that it feels like it is on more of a knife-edge compared to what Russell has reported. This is partly because Hamilton’s driving style hasn’t quite gelled with this generation of cars, leading to more time to adjust and adapt. As Hamilton put it at Spa, “I just keep trying to drive the way I want to drive, but then I realize it doesn’t always work.”

But Silverstone was an emphatic reminder of Hamilton’s enduring quality and class. He made the most of the tricky conditions to win on merit, capitalizing on Red Bull’s struggles and McLaren’s strategy miscue. He will want to harness more of those displays through the second half to sign off from his time at Mercedes on a high.

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(Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

(Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

Nico Hülkenberg made the most of his full-time return in 2023 to show he’d lost none of his edge in his years away from F1. But this season has made it unthinkable that he was ever without a seat.

Haas never expected to be a regular points-scorer this year, owing to the late development of its car and the off-season changes. But with a car that’s actually raceable, not chewing through its tires, Hülkenberg has flourished, going under the radar as one of this year’s most impressive performers.

Hülkenberg has scored 22 of Haas’s 27 points, including two sixth-place finishes. He’s also finished 11th on five occasions and, remarkably, reached Q3 more times than he’s gone out in either Q2 or Q1, fighting higher up the grid than he or Haas should be. See Hülkenberg’s last-lap pass on Sergio Pérez (who did have damage) in Austria to grab P6.

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Sauber and Audi may have missed out on Carlos Sainz, their top target for next year, but the first half of this season shows that by already signing Hülkenberg, they’ll have a quality driver ready for the start of the factory program in 2026.

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(BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

(BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

Yuki Tsunoda enters the summer break with a contract for next year (announced in June) and outperforming his RB teammate, veteran Daniel Ricciardo.

He started the season strong, securing the team’s first points in Australia with an eighth-place finish, which was later upgraded to seventh after Fernando Alonso’s penalty. Those six points pushed RB ahead of Haas for sixth in the constructor standings. RB remains ahead of Haas during the summer break, partly thanks to Tsunoda scoring 22 out of the team’s 34 points.

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Tsunoda has advanced to Q3 eight times this season and secured seven-point finishes, the highest being P7 at Melbourne and Miami. Between the Australian GP and Monaco at the end of May, Tsunoda finished in the top 10 in five of those six races. He is one of the stronger drivers out of the midfield this year but has made mistakes. Take the Canadian GP, for example. He was in points contention before he locked up and spun, eventually ending the race P14.

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(Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

(Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

Williams’ 2024 is very different from last season, and yet Alex Albon still has managed to squeeze four Q3 appearances and two top 10 finishes, amounting to four points, out of the FW45. This trend continues from 2023, when Albon continued to put together high-level performances and extract the maximum out of the car. He’s out-qualified teammate Logan Sargeant, 14-0.

Some of his races have been affected by no fault of his own, like the wheel nut issue and penalty at Imola and Carlos Sainz spinning in Canada. During that latter race, Albon pulled off an impressive double overtake on Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, and he was in the fight for points before the Ferrari driver spun and made contact with Albon.

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One big moment, though, that’ll stand out from the first half of the year is what happened in Australia. The heavy crash in practice resulted in significant damage. Because Williams didn’t have a spare chassis at that race, it had to withdraw the car. And the team opted to give the remaining car to Albon, leaving Logan Sargeant on the sidelines.

Albon can extract the maximum from the car, even under pressure from higher-performing competitors. But what he needs to be a consistent top-10 contender and compete alongside the top teams is just that—that type of car.

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(BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

(BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images)

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Once an integral part of the towns and cities they called home, dozens of the nation’s Football League grounds have disappeared over the past 30 or so years. All took with them a wealth of memories for generations of supporters.

But what happened next? The Athletic has travelled the country to find out, taking in an array of housing estates, retail parks and even the odd hospital along the way.

Kicking off our four-part series, running each Tuesday in August, is perhaps the most poignant of the lot, Bradford Park Avenue. Home to a League club for 62 years and county cricket for more than a century, Park Avenue sits forgotten and forlorn, with one of its few visitors in the past decade being an archaeological dig…

Looking up at a row of turnstiles that once led to a football ground where England played an international match, it is as if time has stood still.

Painted high on the wall is ‘5/-’, indicating an admission price of five shillings in old money. Another couple of bricked-up entrances can be found around the corner, along with a giant rusting iron gate topped with spikes to deter anyone trying to get in for free.

A gents’ toilet block can also clearly be seen towards the back of a banking where supporters last stood more than 50 years ago, while a stroll inside reveals two massively overgrown terraces and a crumbling perimeter wall staring out over the bumpy remains of a pitch once graced by greats such as Stanley Matthews and Len Shackleton.

Also buried amid the shrubbery that has been allowed to run wild are two floodlight pylon bases, plus a mountain of sporting memories. Welcome to Park Avenue, Bradford, the forgotten home of the former Football League club who went by the same name that is now the ghostly preserve of Mother Nature.

In an age when the demolition crews seem to move in almost the moment the gates close for the final time at great sporting cathedrals such as Highbury, Roker Park and White Hart Lane, this one-time sporting mecca really is a throwback.

Not only does the cricket ground where Yorkshire played for more than a century until 1996 remain, albeit in a semi-derelict state, but enough survives on the adjacent football side — the two sports shared a main stand, designed by leading architect Archibald Leitch — to leave supporters of a certain vintage misty-eyed.

Cricket at Bradford Park Avenue in the summer of 1949 (S&G/Getty Images)

Park Avenue was always regarded locally as superior to Valley Parade, the home of Bradford City — once of the Premier League and now of League Two. For a start, it had cover for 14,000 and a capacity of 37,000. The railway station and tram spur that could be found where the ornate Grand Mosque now stands just across Horton Park Avenue meant thousands of fans could also be ferried to and from the area in hardly any time at all.

Then there was the corner pavilion, nicknamed the ‘Dolls’ House’ by visitors. This charming two-storey building served a similar purpose to Fulham’s Craven Cottage, housing the football club’s dressing rooms and committee room with officials able to watch matches from an upstairs balcony.

This, though, could not save it as Bradford’s fortunes declined markedly as the Swinging Sixties morphed into the next decade.

Voted out of the League in 1970, the club stumbled on in the Northern Premier League for another four years before folding amid debts of £57,652 ($73,580 in today’s exchange rates). By then, the football ground had been sold to a property developer, with Avenue playing their final season across the city at Valley Parade.

Bradford Park Avenue, as seen in 1955 (George W. Hales/Getty Images)

A restrictive covenant that dictated the land could only be used for sport and recreation pursuits meant the football ground ended up being left to wither and die, even after the local council stepped in to purchase the site with grandiose plans to build a sports complex.

By 1980, Leitch’s ornate main stand had become so unsafe it had to be demolished. The news sparked a wave of nostalgia across the city, as hundreds of fans streamed to the old ground for one last look.

A pensioner was even helped onto the weed-infested Canterbury Avenue End and left, leaning unsteadily on a rusting crash barrier, to stare silently over what must have felt like an unkempt grave.

Tim Clapham, a supporter since 1963 and now the club historian, was among those making one last pilgrimage before the wrecking ball claimed not only the 4,000-seat main stand and its distinctive three gables, but also the Dolls House and the Horton Park End roof.

“Only the half-time scoreboard was left standing, with even the old social club sold to a local pig farmer,” Clapham says. “Such a sad time. So many turned up, hoping to take a keepsake, something to remember the ground by.

“Some wanted the ‘BFC’ letters etched on the middle gable of the stand, while others fancied the two coats of arms at either end. But, when they came down, these things were much bigger than they had looked. You’d have needed a truck to carry them away!”

As Bradford mourned for a second time the loss of a venue that had hosted not only an England versus Ireland international in 1909 but also what remains the fastest-ever Football League goal (four seconds, Jim Fryatt against Tranmere Rovers in 1964), cricket at least survived.

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That was until 1996, when Yorkshire County Cricket Club opted to focus primarily on Headingley as their home with a small number of games every season also played in Scarborough. Others to lose their status as out-grounds were Middlesbrough, Harrogate and Hull, where part of the MKM Stadium now sits on the old Circle cricket ground as the dual home of Hull City and rugby league club Hull FC.

Park Avenue had become a shell of its former self long before that final County Championship match against Leicestershire in 1996.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

Just what anyone able to remember Park Avenue in its heyday would make of the old place in 2024 is anyone’s guess. The cricket square has, in recent years, been brought back to first-class standard, allowing Yorkshire’s second XI to return and play the odd match.

But the surroundings are in a sorry state. Where the grand-looking pavilion once stood until the late 1980s is now just a wasteland and where Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth et al would plot the downfall of visiting batsmen now sits 10-foot bushes. Time is a formidable opponent when sports arenas are left to rot.

Just in front sit a few dilapidated rows of seats, a good number vandalised and all doing battle with the weeds gradually creeping through the concrete steps. It’s a similar story elsewhere, with fenced-off sections of crumbling terraces interspersed with banks of vegetation.

The only bright spot is a mural depicting England spin bowler — and local hero — Adil Rashid that was painted to mark the launch of the Hundred competition in 2021. Even that, though, is fading to add to the rundown feel of a ground once regarded as the jewel in Yorkshire’s cricketing crown.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

What remains of the old football ground is no less depressing, even allowing for how its abandoned state allowed an archaeological dig in 2015 that unearthed all manner of fascinating artefacts.

The haul, captured for posterity by the Breaking Ground art project, included boot studs, coins, marbles, goal hooks and even a nappy pin. The latter, it transpired, related to the elastic on goalkeeper Chick Farr’s shorts snapping during one match, forcing the trainer to perform an emergency repair. Farr never lived the episode down, regularly finding himself showered by pins when standing between the posts.

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Hopes of Bradford ever returning to their spiritual home ended when a cricket school (now a gym) was built on half of the old football pitch in 1988. A new Park Avenue club was formed in the same year and their home for almost three decades has been Horsfall Stadium, an athletics venue that sits a couple of miles away from this old ground.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)

On the cricket side, however, grand plans were unveiled just a few years ago to bring Yorkshire back to their old stomping ground via an ambitious £5.5million revamp.

Stage one saw a state-of-the-art changing facility, outdoor nets and a score-hut open in 2017, with England and Yorkshire team-mates Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Rashid among those cutting the ribbon. The nets, built between what was the halfway line and roughly the penalty area of what remained of Avenue’s old pitch, were converted to an indoor facility last year.

The rest of the original scheme — a community pavilion with changing rooms that were to be located to the side of where the original stood, a restaurant catering for 250 diners, 1,000 seats for spectators and security fencing — never materialised. As a result, the mooted return of county cricket to the city of Bradford never became reality. Instead, York joined Leeds and Scarborough on the roster of Yorkshire’s home grounds.

That may be the final nail in the coffin for any hopes of bringing professional sport back to this corner of Bradford. Now, all that’s left behind is the ghostly presence of the past to go with the abandoned turnstiles and terraces that, for the past five decades, have been home to just the worms and the weeds.

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(Top photo: Richard Sutcliffe, Tim Clapham)

Cole Hocker of the United States scored one of the biggest upsets in Olympic running Tuesday night, outrunning Jakob Ingebrigtsen and outkicking Josh Kerr, and everyone else, down the stretch to win the men’s 1500-meter to turn what was supposed to be a two-man battle into the surprise of the Games.

With a massive kick in the final 30 meters, Hocker — born in Indianapolis, and reared at the University of Oregon, the heart and guts of American distance running since the days of Steve Prefontaine — finished in an Olympic record 3:27.65, just under a quarter of a second ahead of Kerr, the reigning world champion.

Yared Nuguse, Hocker’s teammate, outkicked Ingebrigtsen for the bronze as the defending Olympic champion faded to fourth after setting the pace for the first 1300 meters.

For Ingebrigtsen, it was another major disappointment, given his star power and outspoken nature. He has never been shy about his confidence in his abilities.

Ingebrigtsen, the last announced for the race, held up a single index figure and stared at the camera for all 80,000 fans to see on the giant video boards above the purple track. He should have held up four on a night when he lost his third consecutive championship 1500, including the 2022 and 2023 races at the World Athletics Championships.

On a perfect night for racing, the skies clear, the air still and dry and borderline cool, this was supposed to be the ultimate showdown between the imperious Ingebrigtsen and Kerr, the brash Scot who has had Ingebrigtsen’s number for years.

And that is how the race unfolded until the final turn. Ingebrigtsen, the fastest man in the field, went right to the front and set a blistering pace, 1:51.3 for the first 800. The strategy was laced with both guts and fear. He was courageous enough to try to do one of the hardest things in running, win a race from the front, wire-to-wire.

But the move was borne from the fear of knowing that other runners could finish faster than he could, that his only hope was to bury Kerr and the rest of the field far enough behind him so that they would run out of track before they would be able to catch him.

With 200 meters left, he heard the crowd noise rise to head-splitting levels. His head swiveled to the right, and he saw Kerr closing in. By the time they got to the final straightaway, Kerr was well on his way to passing him by.

WOW. 😱

A STUNNING upset in the men’s 1500m as AMERICAN COLE HOCKER takes gold! #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/wlq81lbvSO

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— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 6, 2024

But then so was Hocker, the former Oregon Duck flashing the speed that he has shown before, but never at this level or this pace.

He’d been tucked in the middle of the pack for the last 600 meters, not too close to the leaders but not too far off either, and when it was time to go, he went and went fast enough for both the Olympic and American records in one of the signature events of the Games.

“I kind of told myself that I’m in this race too,” Hocker said. “If they let me fly under the radar, then so be it. I think that might’ve just been the best.”

Kerr had the up-close view of Hocker’s triumph. The Scot had run a personal best and set the national record, and had little to be disappointed about. But he had no idea what unfolded behind him.

He looked at the scoreboard and saw Ingebrigtsen fell to fourth. A huge smile broke out across his face. He looked over at Hocker and Nuguse and started clapping at them like they were old mates.

Neil Gourley, Kerr’s teammate in Great Britain, ran for Hocker’s coach, Ben Thomas, for 10 years and has trained with Hocker. He said he wasn’t surprised at all by the result.

“If Cole is there and he has anything left in the last 150 meters, he’s dangerous,” he said. “Anyone who saw what he did in the U.S., nationals wouldn’t be surprised.”

And yet, how could you not be?

This was the race all running nerds had circled on their Olympic schedules, but not because of Hocker. In a sport where respect and politeness generally rule the day, at least in public, Ingebrigsten and Kerr veered toward trash talk.

There was a certain Scandinavian charm to Ingebrigtsen when he came on the scene five years ago, a middle-distance champion from a country where people generally win Olympic medals wearing skis rather than running spikes. He was the youngest of three running brothers.

Oldest brother Henrik finished fifth in the 1500 meters at the 2012 Olympics. Middle brother Filip won the bronze medal in the 1500 at the 2017 World Championships. Their father, Gjert, kept them on a tight leash while he trained them, warning off girlfriends, which worked until it didn’t.

The family allowed Norwegian television cameras to follow them for a documentary, which featured their rather monastic existence.

“Team Ingebrigtsen” became a huge hit and made the brothers famous, especially Jakob, whose profile skyrocketed when he won the gold medal in the 1500 at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Imagine “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” but with Norwegian distance runners and you get the idea.

Ingebrigsten would also win golds in the 5,000 at the world championships in 2022 and 2023. But somewhere along the way, his charm began to wear thin, especially in the northern region of Great Britain, Scotland to be specific, with members of the Edinburgh Athletic Club.

Somewhere along the way though, Ingebrigtsen’s confident charm morphed into something bordering on imperious disdain for the competition, none of which he backed away from even as he began losing races to those aforementioned members of the Edinburgh Athletics Club.

Ingebrigtsen has proven excellent at running but somewhat graceless in both victory and defeat, especially the latter. Perhaps his words get lost in translation, but in May of 2022, when asked if he was disappointed that the competition wasn’t pushing him, he said, “You can’t be disappointed with people not being better.”

That didn’t go over well, and Jake Wightman made him eat his verbiage two months later when he ran away from Ingebrigtsen in the 1500 final at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Ore. Ingebrigtsen quickly began telling people he hadn’t been at 100 percent. Wightman was “a lesser athlete.”

Last year, Kerr, 26, another Scot and former collegiate star at the University of New Mexico, started beating Ingebrigtsen.

He beat him at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, where once more the Norwegian claimed to not have been at his best, and then this year at the Prefontaine Classic. He has referred to Kerr as “the next guy”, as in, the runner who can win when he isn’t fully fit.

He made no such claims, Tuesday night, at least not in English.

Asked if he regretted his decision to blaze out to the lead, he said yes and no.

“Of course, it’s a tactical error that I am not able to reduce my pace the first 800,” he said. “Just a little too hard.”

He said that with 650 meters to go, he could sense that Kerr and the others were pushing the pace faster, testing to see how much he had left. He said he tried to respond but ran out of gas — 1500 meters had proven “just 100 meters too much.”

“I ruined it for myself by going way too hard,” he said.

Not for Hocker, who is just 23 years old and part of a triumvirate of young American milers that had one of the country’s best races at the distance in Olympic history, with Nuguse, the 25-year-old child of Ethiopian immigrants who was born in Kentucky and attended Notre Dame, coming in third, and Hobbs Kessler, a 21-year-old from Ann Arbor, finishing fifth.

Kessler described Ingebrigtsen as the pinnacle of fitness. “It just shows how hard it is to run from the front,” he said.

Wasn’t that the truth Tuesday night, especially with an angry Scot and two Americans looking to make their mark giving chase?

“Both me and Cole knew coming in we could win on the right day,” Nuguse said. “A really cool moment.”

For him and for Hocker.

“That’s an unbelievable feeling,” Hocker said. “I just felt like I was getting carried by the stadium and God. My body just kind of did it for me. My mind was all there and I saw that finish line.”

Required reading

(Photo: Michael Steele / Getty Images)