Wightman's silver a 'perfect fairytale' with surprise twist

When Jake Wightman sat on the bus to the 1500m heats at the World Athletics Championships on Sunday, he told himself that if he failed to make it through he was done.

- Sean Ingle

He was 31. His body was breaking down so often that he felt he had post-traumatic stress disorder. And he feared his best days were behind him. Yet, just three days later, what had seemed like a final hurrah became a glorious resurrection.

What a fighter. What an athlete. What a 1500m final. Most expected this to be a shootout between Britain’s defending champion, Josh Kerr, and the young Dutch star Niels Laros. Instead the script was flipped on its head and ripped into pieces. Twice.

A slow burner of a race finally ignited with 200m remaining when Wightman charged from third to first, leaving others flailing. Around the final bend Laros was beaten. Kerr was long gone too, and was hobbling badly after injuring a calf. Wightman smelt gold. But then Isaac Nader from Portugal, unheralded and unfancied, swooped from the gods in the final metres.

"I ran my perfect race," Wightman said after winning a brilliant silver medal in 3min 34.12sec - just 0.02sec behind Nader, with the Kenyan Reynold Cheruiyot claiming bronze. "I thought I'd written my own perfect fairytale. But there's nothing else I could have done. He [Nader] ran an unbelievable race."

Most people had thought Wightman was finished as a top athlete after a slew of injuries that began when he fractured a foot while doing plyometrics in 2023. A year later he sustained a calf tear and then a hamstring tear that ruled him out of the Paris Olympics.