Canadian Olympian Kieran Lumb makes major coaching change before nationals
The two-time Canadian 1,500m champion is moving from Seattle to Norway to be coached by Gjert Ingebrigtsen
Kevin Morris
Canadian Olympian Kieran Lumb has made the biggest move of his career—just a month before lining up for both the 1,500m and 5,000m at this week’s Canadian Track and Field Championships in Ottawa.
Lumb will arrive at the Canadian Track and Field Championships on Thursday riding the momentum of a 5,000m personal best of 13:12.54 in Heusden, the Netherlands. His time is the fastest outdoor 5,000m by a Canadian this year, but perhaps, more attention-grabbing is who he’s now being coached by: Gjert Ingebrigtsen—the estranged father of two-time Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
The 26-year-old’s unusual mid-season move to a new group started with a friendship with one of Ingebrigtsen’s athletes, world championship 1,500m medallist Narve Gilje Nordås. In June, he joined Nordås in St. Moritz, Switzerland, for a month-long training camp. Lumb called the connection “a great fit,” and one that sparked a change in his training environment.
“I loved the setup,” says Lumb on Ingebrigtsen’s group. “This is a step I felt I needed to take to figure out how good I can be.”
That step included joining the newly formed Vikings Athletics Club pro team—Ingebrigtsen’s latest project after a storm of personal controversy. Ingebrigtsen, a father of seven, was accused of abuse by his children. He was acquitted of most charges in June 2025, receiving a suspended sentence for a single incident.
In response to the investigation, the Norwegian federation denied Ingebrigtsen accreditation for the Paris 2024 Olympics and 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest—but now he is eligible to return to the world championships this year.
For Lumb, Ingebrigtsen’s past didn’t define his decision. “I think for me, what’s important is to make your own opinions on people when you meet them,” he says. “I can only speak to my experience with Gjert, and he’s been extremely welcoming and kind on and off the track. I have nothing but positive things to say.”
After a quiet stretch through the early part of his 2025 season, Lumb felt his performances were plateauing. “I spoke to my coach Andy [Powell] and told him how I felt. I started exploring other setups,” Lumb tells Canadian Running. That search led him to St. Moritz—an experience Lumb describes as eye-opening.
Lucia Stafford and Kieran Lumb win back-to-back national 1,500m titles
Since joining the group, Lumb has seen more consistency, clocking 3:35 in two of his three European 1,500m races under Ingebrigtsen’s guidance, and says he’s quickly seeing gains from the Norwegian training method—a system built around lactate-guided threshold intervals and intensely polarized training. “We work hard, but we keep the easy days extremely easy,” Lumb says of the approach. “We create the stress, then recover and absorb it all.”
After not reaching the men’s 1,500m semi-finals at the 2024 Olympics, Lumb found himself questioning his future. “There were moments where I had to ask myself why I was doing this sport,” he says. “The Olympics are the tip of the iceberg and just one of many arenas we compete in. I love running for running.”
Lumb says he feels confident heading into the Canadian championships, where he is doubling up in the 1,500m and 5,000m. “I wanted a new challenge,” Lumb says of his decision to double. “I feel aerobically fit right now. And it’s an exciting time to be a part of the 1,500m in Canada with so much upcoming talent like Foster [Malleck], Marco [Arop] and Max [Davies].”
Even though he has a busy weekend ahead in the nation’s capital, racing potentially three times in four days (between July 31 and Aug. 3), he says he’s ready to take the step from being a pro to being a consistent world-class 1,500m runner.
