Ingebrigtsen Sr accused sons of 'character assassination'

The father of the double Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen accused his sons of a "perfect character assassination" on a secret recording made after they fired him, a court has been told.

- Sean Ingle

Gjert Ingebrigtsen also claimed that he had been dragged "down to hell" after he was referred to child services following an incident in January 2022 where he was accused of whipping his daughter, Ingrid, in the face with a wet towel.

But Henrik Ingebrigtsen, the older brother of Jakob, who competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, told his father that he only had himself to blame for the split - and what had happened subsequently - because he had been "violent" towards Ingrid.

On another extraordinary day in Sandnes, Norway, the court was told long extracts of a terse and often argumentative 90-minute conversation, which had been recorded by Henrik without Gjert's knowledge a week after the towel incident. Gjert described that act as a "betrayal".

At one point in the recording Gjert told Henrik: "You have fired me as a coach. You have rejected us as parents and you are carrying out a perfect character assassination on top of that. What we have worked for, you erase with a stroke of a pen. And then the last bit of my income goes away."