Jake Wightman on feeling like a fraud, being a spectator and Paris '24

Instead, a string of injuries wiped him out for the entire summer and so he travelled to the Romanian capital as part of the media.

And it wasn’t long until the reality of how short people’s memories can be hit him.

“Normally, I’d go through the accreditation centre as an athlete but in Budapest, I went through as media. And absolutely no one knew who I was,” Wightman recalls. 

“And I was walking around the stadium and hardly anyone even batted an eyelid. I should have been there to defend my title but because I wasn’t running, most people had no idea who I was.

“That week working as media was fun, but it definitely made me realise I wasn’t ready for that yet.”

The past eighteen months of Wightman’s life have gone far from to plan.

Having magnificently won world gold in the summer of 2022, as well as Commonwealth bronze and European silver, the conclusion of that season marked the beginning of a lengthy spell on the sidelines for Wightman which saw him race just once - in a low-key 3000m - in seventeen months.

It would have been a testing time for any elite athlete, but the timing of his injuries – he suffered a foot injury due to an accident in the gym last January which was then followed by a stress fracture in his shin and then a torn hamstring – deprived him of what should have been the most unique season of his life where he arrived at every race with the distinction of being world champion.

Wightman is one of the most level-headed athletes out there but even he admits it wasn’t always easy to navigate his year as world champion on the sidelines rather than on the track.

“The worst bit for me was that I kept getting glimmers that suggested I was nearly ready to compete. I cross-trained so hard last February and March but then I had nothing to show for it because I didn’t race,” the 29-year-old says.

Jake Wightman won the 1500m at the World Championships in 2022

“It’s not the reason we race but one of the big perks of winning a major title is the earnings you can make the following year. So it was disappointing because 2023 should have been one of my most enjoyable seasons and I missed out on that.

“There would have been a lot of pressure on me but I was looking forward to testing myself under that pressure. 

“And then as soon as I got to Budapest for last year’s Worlds I thought “why am I doing this to myself?”

“It’s tough watching races you know you’re meant to be in but because you’re not, you can’t have any impact on the outcome. Watching the 1500m final was the toughest one because I was constantly thinking about what I’d be doing. So I had to take my mindset to a different place and I tried to look at it as a chance for me to refresh and reset both mentally and physically.”

Wightman admits that he could, most likely, have done enough to make the start line of last year’s World Championships, which saw Wightman’s Edinburgh AC teammate Josh Kerr make it back-to-back world titles for Scottish men but, in stark contrast to just a few years ago, he would now never be content with merely making up the numbers on a British team. These days, he’s in the hunt not for experience, but for medals.

And, having collected world, Commonwealth and European silverware, the one gap in Wightman’s resumé is an Olympic medal.

Paris 2024 is now less than six months away and while Wightman is fully aware of how rapidly those months will pass, he’s also quick to acknowledge that he has much work to do before he can think about standing on the start line in an Olympic final.

First on his path towards this summer’s Olympics is his opening race of the year, tomorrow, at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston.

Pulling on his spikes in anger can’t come soon enough for the London-based Scot but more importantly for Wightman is his certainty that not only is he ready to race, he’s ready to race well.

Training camps in Arizona in the US and in Potchefstroom in South Africa in recent months have left Wightman in, he believes, as good shape as he’s ever been at this point in the year.

But the advantage of having been sidelined for such a sustained period means the Scot lines up in Boston tomorrow with no pressure upon his shoulders, something that’s especially unusual for an athlete who, just eighteen months ago, won a world title.

“Tomorrow, I’m racing with no pressure or expectation,” he says. 

“Not only from myself but also from everyone else and that’s a pretty nice position to be in. 

“Last summer, I felt like a fraud. I was earning a living from athletics but not actually doing what I’m paid to do, which is race. That’s why it’s really nice to be back doing what I’m good at and what I should be doing.

“For me, a lot of my confidence comes from training. I know that if I’m training well, I’ll race well and my past month of training has given me a lot of confidence.

“I feel like I’m a good competitor and you don’t lose that. I believe my racing ability is still there so it’s about getting my body in the right place to show that.

“I don’t think I’ll have too many nerves in Boston because I know I wouldn’t be racing if I wasn’t ready so I think it’ll be like autopilot.

“If I can win the race, that’d be the best-case scenario because it’d show that nothing has changed.”

In the coming weeks, Wightman is on the hunt for the Olympic qualification standard of 3 minutes 33.50 seconds, something he’s confident he can tick-off before the outdoor season begins.

And while the qualification standard is his primary target, Wightman is aware that to be in true medal contention at the Olympic Games, he will more than likely have to run faster than he’s ever run before.

The level of men’s 1500m running currently is astronomical, with reigning world champion Kerr and reigning Olympic champion, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, just two of the men who have pushed the event on in Wightman’s absence.

However, Wightman is nothing if not a competitive beast.

Almost without exception, his greatest performances have come in major championships but the one time this didn’t happen was the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, where he finished in tenth place having run well short of his best.

That experience, coupled with the knowledge that merely making the British team for Paris will not be easy, has ensured that while thoughts of Olympic glory inevitably creep into his head, it’s easy to stop them dominating.

Despite this realism, however, Wightman admits that the knock-on effect of having a world title means there’s only one result that would see him end this season entirely satisfied.

“What’s tough is I still have to qualify for the Olympics and even in the time I was out, the strength of the event in Britain has increased again. So I haven’t thought too much about Paris because it’s dangerous to get ahead of myself. I have to go through the season race by race because there’s a path I have to follow to be in Paris at my best,” he says. 

“I know it’s easy to get carried away and put too much pressure on – I did that in Tokyo and it didn’t have a good outcome so I learnt from that. 

“It’s just 1500m running – I don’t want to overcomplicate it. I perform at my best when I’m relaxed and so it’s about staying calm. Yes this is Olympic year but I’ll still be running for three and a half minutes against the same people I run against all the time so I’m looking at it like that.

“But having won Worlds, the only thing that would top that is Olympic gold.

“Before Tokyo, I was obsessed with just getting a medal and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed with a medal in Paris but I’d always have a feeling that I could have done better. 

“I have to just do my best, though, and whatever that leaves means, I’ll have to come to terms with it.”

In some ways, Wightman has become not so much the forgotten man but the quiet man.

The plaudits for winning that remarkable world title in 2022 didn’t last quite as long as they may have done had he not been on the sidelines for the entirety of last season, with his step into the shadows helped by the fact his compatriot, Kerr, repeated his success in winning world gold.

Some athletes would, justifiably, be bitter about the attention levels not being sustained but there’s none of that from Wightman.

Instead, he’s quick to point out that his relative anonymity going into this year may just prove to be a significant positive.

“I don’t feel completely forgotten but things do move on when you’re not running,” he says.

“I’m obviously not getting the attention I was after winning Worlds but that’s fine – you have to celebrate the people who’re running well. Unless you’re doing that, you don’t really deserve to be spoken about.

“One of the big things I’m hoping for this year is that I can just focus on myself.

“As much as it’s such a privilege to be world champion, you get dragged around doing more things. They’re great opportunities but I perhaps burnt myself out a little bit after winning in 2022. 

“This year, I don’t have a target on my back in the way I would have last year and maybe that’ll be a good thing.”

By the end of the summer, Wightman may well have used these advantages to achieve his ultimate goal of Olympic gold. But one thing he’s sure of is that in the coming months, he’s ready to well and truly remind everyone who may have forgotten just who he is and what he can do.