SANDNES, Norway, March 26, 2025 – Double Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen told a court on Tuesday that his father Gjert “manipulated” and “controlled” him throughout his upbringing.
Gjert Ingebrigtsen, 59, is on trial in Norway accused of physically and mentally abusing his son Jakob, 24, and another of his children.
Gjert, who is his son’s former coach, denies the charges.
Speaking in the court in Sandnes Jakob said: “My upbringing was very much characterised by fear,” reports Norwegian state broadcaster NRK.
“Everything was controlled and decided for me. There was an enormous amount of manipulation.
“As a teenager I felt I had no free will or say in anything.”
During the hearing on Tuesday Jakob, who won 1500m gold at Tokyo 2020 and 5,000m gold at Paris 2024, detailed a series of incidents of alleged abuse.
He said as a schoolboy he could not go to parties and how, as a teenager, he was made to train two or three times a day.
Jakob also described several incidents when he said he had been assaulted by his father.
It is alleged Gjert struck Jakob several times after he received a negative report about his behaviour from school when he was aged eight.
He also said that in 2008, when Jakob was around eight years old, his father hit him in the face because he was late for a race. He described another incident a year later when he says his father kicked him in the stomach after he fell off a scooter.
He described another alleged incident in 2016 at a junior championships when his father threatened him and another episode around the same time when Gjert was said to have thrown his games console out of the window.
Gjert is expected to give evidence to the court next week. Speaking after Tuesday’s hearing, his lawyer, John Christian Elden, told NRK that Gjert had a “different perception of reality”.
Background
Jakob, 24, and his brothers Filip, 31, and Henrik, 34, who are also Olympic athletes, made public claims in October 2023 that their father – who was their coach until 2022 – had been violent.
The trio, who are among seven Ingebrigtsen children, wrote at the time that they “still feel discomfort and fear” about Gjert, who they accused of being “very aggressive and controlling”.
Gjert said at the time via his lawyer that statement was “baseless” and he “never used violence against his children”.
Gjert was charged with one offence in April – but five charges were dropped on the strength of evidence and one other because of time constraints. A further charge was later added to the case.
In addition to his two Olympic titles, Jakob is a two-time 5,000m world champion, two-time world 1500m silver medallist, and 11-time European champion.
At the weekend he won two world indoor titles taking gold in the 3,000m and 1500m in Nanjing, China.
