Wightman and Brazier's tough comebacks show turbocharging of men's middle-distance running

New York Times

2 days ago

Jake Wightman and Donavan Brazier will tell you there is only one thing harder than reaching the top of men's middle-distance running: staying there.
Brazier was 800m World Champion in Doha in 2019. Three years later at Hayward Field in Eugene, Wightman won 1,500m World gold.
Their career paths have read fairly similarly since, set back consistently by injuries that kept them out of multiple global championships. This year, though, both have made their best attempt at a comeback, and graced two stacked 800m and 1,500m fields at the London Diamond League on Saturday.
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The two put up their best performances of the calendar year with strong finishing kicks. Wightman clocked 3:31.58sec for the 1,500m and Brazier 1:43.08s over 800m — both their best times in those distances since winning their respective World Championship finals.
Finishing fourth and sixth respectively, with neither on the theoretical podium, was the latest stark reminder of the turbo-charging men's middle distance running has seen win recent years.
Seeing the numbers evolve is one thing, but watching those who were once the best in the world trying to claw their way back proves it on a purer, more human level.
Brazier had a smile on his face afterwards. He closed with the fastest final 100m in the field, having been swallowed up by the group in the first lap (paced at 49.2s, on world-record pace) and dead-last at 500m.
'I mean, everybody's aggressive. Some people are more aggressive than they should be than others, but it was good,' he said.
'I ended up getting crowded in the back and I wasn't anticipating that. It's my first time in the Diamond League (since 2022), so this is a good learning experience — a season's best too.'
This was his third 800m of the outdoor season and all three have been progressively faster, meaning he has the world standard so can go to US trials at the end of the month to try and qualify for September's World Championships.
'You've got to get with the time. I've been gone for three years, so I'm learning. I'll get there.
'I knew it was going to be fast, so I wasn't really competing to get up front there, because I knew even the last guy at the bell still went out fast enough for a decent time.'
Brazier was the North American record holder for five years between 2019 and 2024. Then, at the Paris Olympic final last August, Canadian Marco Arop took the NACAC record along with his silver medal (1:41.20) and Bryce Hoppel, in fourth, nabbed Brazier's national record (1:41.67).
The gun-to-tape styles of Emmanuel Wanyonyi and Arop drag others along with them, and now there are regularly Diamond League races where multiple men break the 1:42 barrier.
David Rudisha's 1:40.91s world record, on the same London track as Brazier and Wightman raced, looks under threat 13 years on from the 2012 Olympics.
Brazier credits some of the training he has been doing with Wightman in Flagstaff, Arizona, a fabled adopted home for distance runners and altitude camps.
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'It's really worthwhile,' he said, and laughed when The Athletic mentions a 1,000m time trial that was posted on YouTube recently, featuring him, Wightman, Brit Neil Gourley and Hobbs Kessler, the American who won a World road mile title in 2023 and took bronze over 1,500m at the World Indoors last March.
'Yeah, that wasn't much training, he was just whopping my ass in a thousand,' Brazier chuckled. 'Flagstaff is awesome, I like being around them guys, not many 800m guys go up there.'
Evidence of Brazier's revised world standing was no clearer than in his lane draw. He was put in three, alongside GB's Ben Pattison, world bronze medallist in Budapest two years ago.
When the camera panned to Brazier, his reaction was subdued. He looked to the floor and raised one finger to the sky. It comes across as a massive sense of gratitude that he is without the recurring injuries of the early 2020s — the worst of which ended up being a broken left tibia that he unknowingly ran on at the 2021 US trials.
In the 1,500m, Josh Kerr fought it out with teenager Phanuel Koech. Both dipped under 3:29 as the 18-year-old Kenyan set a meeting record.
'It's easier because you know what's going to happen. I think the best runners win, but I would say it's difficult because each race is very, very hard (physically),' Kerr said pre-race. 'It took a little bit of time to get used to, but I think Timothy Cheruiyot changed the game a little in 2019 (with front-running), and he ran a little bit faster in 2017. It's been getting changed for a while, and I turned professional in 2018.'
Wightman, positioned sixth in the train as they hit the bell, saw five shoot away from him around the penultimate bend.
Fellow Brits Kerr and George Mills — who have taken World 1,500m gold and World indoor 3,000m silver since Wightman in 2022 — were one and two.
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When Koech shot up the inside with 200m remaining, Wightman tried to cling on and did well to avoid a collision between Mills and Australian teenager Cameron Myers, which saw both hit the floor and Wightman gain two places.
'It was pretty hard. I think the pace was just a bit up and down,' Wightman (pictured third in the top picture) said afterwards. He talked about the psychological discomfort of 'running to the beat of somebody else's pace,' but the biggest challenge was physical.
'I thought we were on for something quick. So then when I crossed the line, I was 3:31, it felt a lot harder than that. I just feel like those races are still pretty tough for me at the moment.'
'3:31, I ran that in 2019 in old spikes,' he added, nodding to the rise of super spikes (featuring advanced foams, taller stack heights and carbon plates).
This has been a key factor in turbocharging the men's 1,500m, along with superior track designs, Maurten's sodium bicarbonate — to help reduce muscle acidity and sustain intense performance — and top athletes with a preference and tolerance to frontrun.
'You can't compare any race to one another now,' Wightman said. 'You have to be better at running behind a pacemaker than you used to be, which is what I'm trying to do.' He makes the point that at this summer's World Championships, as always, there are no rabbits, no wavelights (to help pacing) and rounds to negotiate.
'I'm in the right spot. I'm probably in as good of a place as I've been any other year, but it's just a higher standard at this point. It's changed a lot in the two years I haven't raced properly.'
When he has been fit he has been something of a unicorn in racing the 800m and 1,500m, initially a discretionary pick in the former for GB for the Olympics last summer before an injury ruled him out.
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'There's just a very high level of 1,500m running now and where (before), in a race like that, you'd get one or two being able to run close to this pace (3:28), now the whole field can. You've just got to be aware of a lot more people than you used to be.'
This was the crux of things, partially explaining the crash and why 10 of the 18 Diamond League men's 1,500m races since the start of 2023 have been won with sub-3:30 times.
Hicham El-Guerrouj's 3:26-flat world record from Rome in 1998 looks much, much more touchable than it once was. And this is without Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the fourth-fastest all-time, 2021 Olympic champion and best male European 1,500m ever, racing outdoors this year.
Brazier and Wightman know the sport owes them nothing. Memories start to fade, the comeback train stretches a little longer, and the sport moves on.
Medals always stay, though, and both have a real chance of perhaps not redemption, but vindication at US and British Trials at the end of this month.