Lightning will strike twice and Josh Kerr will beat Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1500m Olympic final, says Iwan Thomas.

Kerr stunned Norwegian Ingebrigtsen in last year’s World Championship final in Budapest to ignite a red-hot rivalry between the pair.  Edinburgh’s Kerr won bronze at Tokyo 2020 behind Ingebrigtsen and became world indoor 3000m champion in Glasgow earlier this year.

And ahead of a hotly-anticipated showdown in Paris, Olympic silver medallist and discovery+ pundit Thomas said: “The men’s 1500m is going to be one of the most watched events of the athletics.

“Because you have got Ingebrigtsen who up until a few years ago was unflappable. He was the man to beat and on paper he still is, he is the fastest, he is consistently good. 

“But he now knows what it is like to lose. In Oregon, he lost to Jake Wightman, his crown was taken, he was devastated. 

“And then last year it happened again with Josh Kerr. So, two British athletes in two consecutive World Championship finals have beaten the great Ingebrigtsen and I think it is going to happen again.

“Josh Kerr does not show fear, he loves the big occasion. He gets involved in all the trash talk of which there is a lot and it makes it more exciting.”

Ingebrigtsen set an Olympic record on the way to gold in Tokyo and only last week ran a European 1500m record in the penultimate Diamond League event before the Olympics.

It will be one of the events people around the world tune in for with UK viewers able to watch on Eurosport and discovery+ who will deliver the ultimate, multi-platform Games experience with every moment of Paris 2024 available live, across all 19 days of competition.

He added: “Ingebritsen does not want to lose. Ingrebitsen is a broken man.  

“We’ve got middle distance runners who know how to perform when it matters and more importantly, they know how to get in the heads of their opponents.  

“He has recently become a father so whether that has steadied him a little bit more, and that has chilled him out, I don’t know but the men’s 1500m is a race you don’t want to miss.”

Watch every moment of Olympic Games Paris 2024 live only on discovery+, the streaming home of the Olympics