Mechaal came in second in the 3000 final; Jakob Ingebrigtsen, cautious start

Barely thirteen hours after imposing his law, hanging gold at 1,500, Jakob Ingebrigtsen conceded in the final of the 3,000 won his series but with a very cautious mark (7:56.57) and far from the two best registered Serbian Elzan Bibic (7:50.21) and Spanish Adel Mechaal (7:50.69).

The Norwegian, which doubles the distance between them European indoor track in Istanbul (Turkey), performed the same tactics as in the 1,500 qualifying series. He was able to follow several athletes from the start and, in the middle of the race, he changed the pace, without being too strong, and led the group to enter the finish line alone.

His time (7:56.57) was the eleventh of the twenty participants in the qualifying round although, as the first of his series, he was sure of his presence in the final, something that allowed him to relax thinking about in the last race.

In the second series he competed Adel Mechaalwho won the Spanish 3,000-meter Indoor Championship two weeks ago in Madrid and achieved the national record of 1,500 meters in Birmingham with 3:33.28, beating the previous indoor record held by Andrés Díaz since 1999.

In Istanbul, Antonio Serrano’s pupil started the race last, ran comfortably and, with three laps to go, he reacted well to the change of pace and placed in the top four. In the last few meters, when the run took hold, he stepped forward finished second at the finish line with 7:50.69, just behind Elzan Bibic (7:50.21).

The fifteen 3,000 meter finalists are, besides Mechaal and Ingebrigtsen, Elzan Bibic from Serbia, James West and Jack Rowe from Britain, Darragh McElhinney from Ireland, Charles Grethen from Luxembourg, Simon Sundstrom and Emil Danielsson from Sweden, Robin Hendrix from Belgium, the Dutch Mike Foppen and Tim Verbaandert, the Norwegian Magnus Myhre, the French Bastien Augusto and the German Sam Parsons.