The rivals

In sport the whole world is your rival: if you’re not beating them, they’re beating you. You personally. Your elite athlete doesn’t always take that in stride. The Norwegian runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen has “flaws on the track and in the manners realm,” according to his British rival Josh Kerr, himself no slavish devotee of Mr Manners, as Ingebrigtsen will be the first to point out. Last night they came together in the Olympic 1500 metres final in Paris, Ingebrigtsen convinced of his lofty superiority and Kerr of his righteous pugnacity. In their intensely bilateral view of proceeding they forgot that racing is a multilateral business: and that allowed the American Cole Hocker to steal in and take the gold. In the end the rivalry diminished both rivals.

Long-term rivalries add savour to sport: Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding: none of these saw the other’s best points. It was worse with Steve Ovett and Seb Coe because they were supposed to be on the same team. All preferred to deny that rivalry stimulated ever-better performances. All sporting rivalries are intense: but hate is optional. John McEnroe said that when Bjorn Borg retired, something important went out of his own life. The rivalry between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer developed into something not a million miles from love.

Not much chance of that happening with Ingebritsen and Kerr: but now they’re both losers. Last night the spite that exists between them undid them both. Perhaps Mr Manners was handing out the medals.