Why Jake Wightman has no regrets over agonising World Championship silver medal

Every great story deserves an encore and boy did Jake Wightman deliver with a silver that almost tastes of gold.

It has been three long years since he shocked Jakob Ingebrigtsen and the rest of the world to take 1500m glory in Eugene.

Since then, injury after injury had made him question whether he would ever get another chance but after uprooting his life and swapping coaches from his father to his father-in-law, the born racer was back in the arena where he shines.

Only two hundredths of a second separated this from being the greatest fairytale of the lot, Portugal’s Isaac Nader with the last 100 metres of his life to snatch World Championship gold.

But from the depths Wightman has plumbed, this still felt mighty sweet.

“I came so close, so close,” he said after Great Britain’s first medal in Tokyo. “The only way I could have topped that is with the win, but there's nothing else I could have done.

“I thought I’d written my own perfect fairy tale.”

The 1500m always throws up surprises, and in Japan it had already delivered a string of them. Ingebrigtsen’s achilles did for his chances, Kenyan teenager Phanuel Koech tripped and fell, and Olympic champion Cole Hocker was disqualified in the semi-finals after a little too much rough and tumble going for a gap.

That seemed to be opening the door for defending champion Josh Kerr to cement his place among the greats of British athletics but a calf injury on the penultimate lap dashed those hopes.

But Britain had more than one world champion in this race and after strong performances in the heats and the semi-finals, Wightman knew that he was capable of getting back on that podium.

He planned his race to perfection, hitting the front with 200 metres to go as the rest of the field ramped up their pace to try to swallow him up.

Now 31, Wightman knows that when he is at full speed, there are few who can live with him and as the metres counted down, it seemed no one would catch him.

Nader had other ideas, and even a desperate dive from the Scot was not quite enough.

But when you consider what he has come through – a stress fracture in his foot in 2023 to ruin his world title defence, followed by a hamstring injury that ruled him out of the Paris Olympics with a week to go – this meant everything.

He explained: “It's been so hard this season not to come back and compare myself to where I left off in 2022 because I've had some horrible years. I probably got a bit of PTSD almost from what's happened with these injuries.

“Even before this, I felt like I was getting ill. I had a couple of little problems. I thought my season's not going to carry on here. This is going to be the end.

“Even on the bus on the way over, I was like, this could go so many ways. But I just feel like I'm a racer and I know that when I go out there, I'll do everything I can to leave it on the track.”

That is exactly what he did, before an emotional reunion with his father Geoff in the mixed zone afterwards.

The pair had worked together for 15 years but Jake knew that he needed to change things up in 2025. He readily admits that was not easy on his father, who was commentating the race in the stadium just as he had back in 2022.

When he missed out on Paris last summer, Wightman questioned whether he would ever get back onto this stage. Athletics had given him so much before putting him through so much more.

He said: “The Paris one was cruel, like real cruel. I really questioned whether like this was something I wanted to do still.

“It was just kicking me at every point possible. And it's the worst bit of dangling the carrot and then just ripping it away at the last minute when I'm about to take a bite.”

Wightman credits his fiancee Georgie for helping him bounce back from each of those disappointments, while her father John Hartigan and the new coaching team have done wonders in finding ways to keep him healthy.

The 31-year-old wondered whether he would still be able to challenge the best if he could stay injury-free.

On a sweltering night in Tokyo, he has the answer.

Novuna is the title sponsor of the GB & NI Athletics Team. As a trusted finance partner, Novuna helps millions of people and businesses every day. Find out more www.Novuna.co.uk and @_novuna