He said «faen» not f*ck. It’s different. If taken alone, it’s certainly not strong evidence of Gjert being an abusive father. It’s more what you might say if you accidently stub your toe or cut your own finger when cutting onions. Or if your own son is hurt and not achieving his running dreams and you feel sorry for him and at the same time for your combined «sports project» that you’ve been working hard on together for years.
Someone (ACCC h?) wrote - on this thread or one of the numerous other threads: «I assume that this is what we are talking about. What he is being “accused” of is not clear.»
This is my frustration too, the claims of abuse are so unspecific that they are difficult to evaluate. At the same time the «boys» have said, in summary: we are victims and we now need peace and quiet to focus on training. In other words: we will not address any follow up questions.
This creates a situation where any claims cannot be scrutinised. Or as Gjert put it when he faced the press at Hytteplanmila «I cannot defend myself» Jeg kan ikke forsvare meg selv (he speaks in a mix of dialects so that was in print but it might be paraphrasing). It’s even more complicated for him to defend himself because these are not random people making claims against him, it’s his sons who he ultimately wants to reconcile with.
Maybe I’m too generous to Gjert but it strikes me that there is a cleverness to the way these abuse claims have been made, and together with a public statement made by the «boys» agent along the lines of «it’s good that the story is out there so that the boys can get sympathy» This strategy makes me cynical.
It seems like a «no debate» «last word» type strategy where one creates a situation where a claim cannot be scrutinised and you are not required to provide any further explanation or evidence. I’m cynical when such a situation plays out in media/ PR and within the athletics federation where Jakob as the star athlete yields more power than Narve. Especially when there is not a concurrent police investigation or court proceeding taking place where testimony and evidence would be reviewed by, in theory, impartial outsiders, taking into account judicial standards.
In a media /PR claim there is no standard to test the word abuse. If a person perceives they experienced abuse and says they did, the only standard is whether you can get enough people to believe you and turn the situation to your advantage somehow.
While I have sympathy for all involved parties, at the moment I’m leaning towards being more team Narve Nordås and I hope his running career will thrive regardless of being bullied by Henrik Ingebrigtsen and his band of brothers.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out here in Norway. It probably depends who has more friends at NRK, VG, TV2 and at Olympiatoppen. We see lots of cases of «star» or «fading star» athletes going crying to their friends at NRK on slow news days when they are not getting what they want from their federation. This is just a bigger story because it involves a much bigger star, who may or may not have a more legitimate claim of abuse.
I’m curious how much of all of this noise just stems from how these Rogalendinger communicate with each other. Is this just a case of a bunch of brash & outspoken personalities clashing?