Jakob Ingebrigtsen was rolled out for some interviews this week and it seems he’s pretty miserable. Normally, this is the time of year when the young Norwegian starts talking up all the world records he’s going to smash on the track this summer. Along with some trash-talking of all his rivals.Instead, he’s flogging his new signature sports watch. This is the side project Ingebrigtsen has been working on for the last year, but his once unconquerable mentality has clearly been dented since he underwent surgery on his Achilles tendon at the start of February.On Instagram, he talked about just completing a therapy interval session on the “idiot” elliptical trainer, before throwing his eyes up to heaven. Anyone who has ever exercised on that cursed upright machine will understand why.“Right now, my main goal is training and just making sure that everything is running smoothly,” he told Runner’s World. “I’m not committing to racing. I’m very much aware of what happened last year. I was in all of these races, and everything went to s**t. That’s not a fun position to be in.”It’s true he was a shadow of himself – failing to make the 1,500m final at the World Championships in Tokyo, before finishing a distant 10th in the 5,000m, the title he’d easily won two years before. At 25, Ingebrigtsen has plenty of time to get himself right, ideally for the European Championships in August, having won the 1,500m-5,000m double at the last three editions.Still, if Ingebrigtsen understands there’s no point competing unless he’s right, he’s also acutely aware that the longer he’s away from world-class racing, the harder it will be to get back on top.Rhasidat Adeleke has found herself in a sort of similar position right now. At 23, she’s also got time to get herself right, while also increasingly keen to get back racing after a similarly injured-ravaged season last year. Talent doesn’t go away, although it does like to be reminded of itself every so often.Adeleke was on the original entry list for a high-quality 400m at Saturday’s Shanghai Diamond League, the first stop on the 2026 circuit after the Doha meeting was postponed. She’s since withdrawn and is now unlikely to race in Europe until the middle of July.On Friday, Adeleke was listed among the entries for the 400m at the Pre Classic Diamond League in Eugene, Oregon on July 4th, one of five finalists from the 2024 Olympics, including gold medal winner Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic, and runner-up Salwa Eid Naser from Bahrain. This should prove as good a test as any championship final, a clear indication of exactly where Adeleke is in her quest to get back to her best.By her own admission, there were “lingering injuries and continuous setbacks” last year, and it’s not yet entirely clear if that’s all behind her. It’s almost two years now since she ran her Irish record of 49.07 to win silver at the European Championships in Rome, in early June 2024. In her only three 400m races last summer, she ran 50.42 in her first race, then 51.33 in her last. Unfairly or otherwise, Adeleke might also sense some pressure starting to build, but like Ingebrigtsen, there’s a danger in trying to go too fast, too soon.Gout Gout crosses the finish line to win the men's 200m final at the 2025 Australian Open. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images Then there’s the different sort of pressure being faced right now by Gout Gout, the teenage sprint phenom from Australia, who last Sunday night was the subject of his own feature interview on CBS 60 Minutes. With a Sunday night audience of about 10 million in the US alone, and their most-watched news programme for the last 51 years, Gout is finding himself under increasing spotlight, and possibly unfair expectations too. Gout has been fast making a name for himself since the end of 2024, when, still aged 16, he ran 20.04 for the 200m to win the Australian All Schools Championships, the fastest time in history by any sprinter at that age, including the 20.13 Usain Bolt ran at 16. It helps that they are near physical replicas.Since turning 18 last December, Gout has improved his 200m best to 19.67 seconds, winning the Australian senior championships in Sydney last month in the still fastest time anywhere in 2026, and the fastest 200m time by a teenager in world athletics history. The best Bolt could manage before turning 20 was 19.93.CBS sent long-time Sports Illustrated writer Jon Wertheim to Brisbane to interview Gout, also getting behind the mad story of his coach Di Sheppard. A grandmother in her 60s with no formal athletics training, she first spotted Gout racing his schoolmates, and said to the school headmaster: “Watch him, I’m going to make that one a champion.”An unlikely pair, in Gout’s words, “a pretty crazy dynamic”, they’ve stuck together ever since. “Turns out it works perfectly, and [I] wouldn’t have it any other way.”If Sheppard has no interest in any of the fame or potential fortune, Gout appears perfectly destined for it, and at one point told Wertheim: “Running just feeds that inner child in me, that wants to feel free ... This is what I was pretty much put on to this earth to do, and that’s what I’m doing.”After finishing school last December, Gout now has an Adidas deal, which reportedly pays him a base of $4 million over the next eight years. All going to plan, he’ll be 20 when racing for a medal at the 2028 Olympics in LA, and 24, close to his peak, when the 2032 Olympics are held in his home state of Brisbane.He’s already lined up to race Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles over 150m at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting in the Czech Republic on June 16th.Sheppard also told 60 Minutes that she’s being cautious not to push him too fast, too soon. “If I tried to make him super quick now, I’d break him,” she said. This is good coaching advice when it comes to any young athlete, just maybe a little too late to take some of the pressure off.