Olympic Men’s 1500m Odds: Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen vying for gold

The men’s 1500m is traditionally one of the biggest events in the Olympics athletics programme and this year’s race in Paris could be one for the ages.

Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen heads to the French capital as favourite, but British world champion Josh Kerr will also have his eyes on emulating the great Sebastian Coe, who won the coveted prize in both 1980 and 1984.

Olympic men’s 1500m odds

(Odds will display when market is available)

Jakob Ingebrigtsen

The 23-year-old Norwegian is favourite to retain the gold medal he claimed in Tokyo three years ago and it is not difficult to see why.

At 16, he was the youngest athlete to run a sub-four-minute, and this year he looks to be peaking at exactly the right time, having broken his own European record at the Monaco Diamond League meeting on 12th July.

That was the fourth occasion since 2021 that he has broken that mark and it probably represents the best form going into Paris as Kenyans Timothy Cheruiyot and Brian Kamen, and American Yared Nuguse, who are prominent in the betting, were firmly put in their place.

But despite that dominance, he has suffered his fair share of disappointment too, losing in the last two World Championships, on both occasions to British runners.

Jake Wightman, who will specialise in the 800m in Paris, saw him off in 2022, while Josh Kerr had his finest hour a year later in Budapest, which put the Scotsman right at the forefront of all the gold medal talk.

Josh Kerr

Success in Hungary brought Kerr to the fore, but the potential has been there for a while and he took the bronze medal when Ingebrigtsen took gold in Japan.

And that victory has not been a fluke as he took gold indoors at 3000m in Glasgow in March and then built on that win with a decent summer of results.

The most notable victory came over a mile in the only meeting he and the Norwegian have had this year, which came at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon.

On that occasion, Kerr beat Steve Cram’s British record by almost a second, running 3.45:34 on 25th May and that will give the Scotsman huge confidence in the run-up to the Games.

Timothy Cheruiyot

Timothy Cheruiyot looks set to lead the Kenyan challenge and he finished between the two market leaders in the last Olympic final.

Cheruiyot has proved himself at the top level, winning the silver medal at the world championships in London in 2017 and going one better when the globe’s elite reconvened again in Doha two years later.

He suffered a defeat to Ingebrigtsen at May’s Diamond League meeting in Oslo by just three-hundredths of a second and ran his best time of the year when second behind the Olympic favourite in Monaco with a time of 3.28:71, so he probably deserves to be regarded as the best of the rest.

Brian Komen

Brian Koman’s best moment came in 2023 when the Kenyan won the African Games in Accra, Ghana and he ran a PB of 3.28:80 when third in Monaco two weeks ago.

He came out on top of the Diamond League meeting in Doha in May, but neither Ingebrigtsen nor Kerr were present that night, so he still looks to have a bit to prove.

Yared Nuguse

American challenger Yared Nuguse holds the North American record for both the 1500m and the mile, his time for which - 3.43:97 - is the fourth fastest in history.

He was beaten by both Cheruiyot and Koman for the places in Monaco when the Kenyan pair outkicked him in the final 100 metres, and was third in the Prefontaine Classic behind the two market leaders.

His defeat to Cole Hocker in the US trials was the first time he had lost to an American challenger for two years.

Cole Hocker

Cole Hocker already knows what it is like to be left in Josh Kerr’s wake after he had to settle for the silver medal in the 3000m at the World Indoor Championships.

He broke Galen Rupp’s American record on that occasion and, at the age of 23, he will be looking to make significant improvements on the sixth place he earned in Tokyo and his seventh at the worlds in Budapest.

This article was written by a partner sports writer via Spotlight Sports Group. All odds displayed on this page were correct at the time of writing and are subject to withdrawal or change at any time.