Gjert and the Ingebrigstens

The brothers are coaching themselves with Henrik taking the lead in a way. They’ve talked about it in various interviews.

They train themselves. Henrik supposedly has some elevated role.

Thanks

Henrik is taking care of the logistics. I don’t think he has an elevated role when it comes to the training program.

I wonder what happened there. I had assumed Gjert wanted to retire, stop travelling, etc. But now he's back with Nordas, it seems a bit weird. Maybe it was a case of ending the coaching relationship to ensure the family relationship didn't break down

Have you seen «Team Ingebrigtsen»? The brothers were probably fed up with him. Probably there was some other incidents as well, but I don’t know what is true and not.

I remember watching those videos. What I remember most is Gjert getting upset at Jakob for having his gf over all the time. Gjert claimed it was harming Jakob's sleep which it probably was.

That’s many years ago. If you watch the last season, there is much bickering both with Henrik and Gjert, and Jakob and Gjert.

You bet it was ;)

yep, and she was sick and coughing and that pissed Gjert off. I agree with him on that one. They work so hard to have a virus derail their goals. He can be controlling but that's also what led to the boys success in the beginning. It's a structured, routine life, and he made that clear to the boys from what I've watched. I'm sure the partners had a say in it. From my perspective he didn't seem to care for them. I remember the Olympics episode where Jakob wins and Elizabeth is driving to the airport to get him. She comments, "Jakob did this all by himself, no one else can take this from him." It seemed geared toward Gjert. THen they show Gjert's mom saying how "without him this wouldn't be..."

As far as various sources has revealed, it came to a point (maybe even beyond it) where he had to chose if he wanted to be their father or their coach. He chose the first and hoped that wounds would heal eventually.

That seems easy enough

Why did they have to fake that health issue

Why did his daughter stop training at the exact same time

And only not with Filip, as he left for Oslo.

That sounds rough. Imagine devoting years and years of your life for someone to succeed, learning everything from 0 in a field you had no prior interest in, paying for everything from a young age without any guarantee of success : shoes, training camps, physiotherapist, treadmills, recovery, lab tests etc. ,quitting your job for him, controlling every small detail and making sure everything is perfect, from sleep, to nutrition, to training, to recovery, to travel, and organizing everything all year, from races, to training camps, hotels and logistics.

All that during 11 years, for his girlfriend, who wasn’t even there for more than half of that period and who probably doesn’t know anything about running, to say : « He did it all by himself ».

No girl, no one can become an olympic champion just by himself, that’s just disrespectful to Gjert, Henrik, Filip, Tone and the dozens of people, who helped a small boy with a dream, to make it a reality.

Of course Jakob is insanely talented, smart, hard working and deserving, just like his success shows, and no one can take that from him. But you have to realise that the majority of high school and middle school kids have their PE or history teacher, who doesn’t know anything about middle distance running, as a coach, no professional runners to look up to, as brothers, and parents who don’t really care about their running, let alone letting them miss school for days or even weeks, and paying to send them in training camps in South Africa in 7th or 8th grade.

I’m sure there are hundreds of young runners and high school kids who would have given everything to have half the setup and coaching Jakob had.

Yes, Gjert can be a bit controlling but that’s something you have to deal with if you want to become the best in the world. Plus he always said he doesn’t want to push them into running and he’ll support them and help them no matter what their dreams are, he didn’t even care about running before his kids started to show interest in it. And he even tried to discourage them from engaging in professional running, I remember him warning young Jakob about how hard and restrictive it’s going to be if he wants to be the best. But if you show him that running is really what you want to do with your life, then he’ll help you reach your maximum potential. That’s what he did with Jakob and I don’t think he regrets all those sacrifices now.

Gjert surely is the man and you shouldn’t disrespect all his work.

Fake it? He had a health scare. He lost a lot of weight and started exercising. Having that conflict and choice is a huge mental toll which is indeed an health issue. Because she got sick and tired of her dad/coach, which was one of the main reasons he re-evaluated whether he could be both coach and dad.

Lots of stuff mentioned from the show Team Ingebrigtsen but to me a salient part of the show was after Jakob won gold in Tokyo, Gjert's immediate reaction was to run into a corner and sob into a wall.

The pressure on everyone to go through that intense a coaching process for years, was clearly extremely high.

A friend of mine coached a family member. Not to a medal, but to the Olympics. They said it was far more exhausting than coaching a non family member because they carried not just the time and labour you put into them as an athlete but also all the love and support you put into your family. Even though he viewed the Olympics as a success the process left him burnt out for years and it took awhile for the relationship with his family to return to normal.

I can't imagine doing that but for multiple kids across an entire decade.

For all the bickering, the man clearly loves his family, the mom seems a great person. I hope they're all happy.

I believe that he has coached nordas for awhile.

He has coaced Nordas since he was 15.

Mentions it in this interview.

Yes exactly. Maybe he absolutely had to reduce stress. We don't know and it's not really our business! He can say 'a health issue' without having to define it further.