The father of double Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen forced his daughter to keep running even though she was struggling to breathe after forgetting to take her asthma medication, a court has heard.
Ingrid Ingebrigtsen said that her father, Gjert – who coached her brothers Jakob, Henrik and Filip to international glory and became a TV star after the success of the documentary Team Ingebrigtsen – had scolded her during the incident, which occurred on a treadmill in the family’s basement.
“I ended up jumping off the treadmill, ran up to my room and breathed,” Ingrid told the court in Sagnes, Norway. “I tried to calm down. I expressed that I wanted to quit athletics.”
A few days later Ingrid, who is now 18, said that she had broken down in tears in front of producers of the fly-on-the-wall series.
“They asked me a normal question, about the future of my career,” she added. “Then I saw no future. Then I broke down brutally. I couldn’t control it. They looked at me with their backs turned and were horrified. The interview ended.”
The documentary series is the most successful show in Norwegian TV history, but Ingrid told the court that it didn’t always reflect the reality of family life.
“I was five years old when the recording began,” she said. “This is something I grew up with and lived with, without having had a real choice myself. You could easily notice that something changed when a camera came along. I think they probably got a lot that wasn’t included.
“The entire series is not rigged, but certain situations and conversations could have been rigged,” she added. “We were placed in the kitchen and ‘now we’re going to talk about this’. But the conversations we had were real.”
According to the indictment, Gjert is alleged to have used threats, coercion and violence against his daughter, as well as restricted her freedom of movement.
Gjert, who is facing six years in jail for abusive behaviour towards Jakob and Ingrid, denies all allegations of violence.
On her second day of her evidence, Ingrid also told the court that her father had put his finger in her face and whipped her with a wet towel when she asked to go out with friends.
She said that the relationship with her father had broken down after she had decided to stop running the previous autumn, and that she had been forced to stay at home during her free time against her will.
“He could ignore me completely,” she said. “I felt like he was mad at me. And one day he said that he didn’t see me as his daughter any more.”
Asked about the incident in January 2022, Ingrid said she had pushed back when he refused to let her hang out with friends between 5pm and 6pm, only for him to put his finger in her face.
“I had felt trapped in my own home for so long,” she said. “I was pretty determined that today I would make it happen. I didn’t accept the ‘no’ I got from him.”
“I had been so depressed and ignored for several months, I simply felt bullied. I pushed his finger away. To this day I don’t understand how I dared to do it, but I was probably pretty upset and angry.
“He had a small towel that he had been sweating in, so it was wet. He whipped it at my face. First once without hitting. Then he did it once more, and then he hit me on the cheek.”
Ingrid told the court that she then ran to the wife of her brother Henrik, who lived two doors away. Afterwards she said her father called her “many times and said that if I didn’t come, he would kind of come and get me”.
Under cross-examination, Ingrid was shown a series of text messages between her and her father in 2021, which she agreed showed that she had never asked for a day off from training before she quit running.
The court was also shown a text message from Gjert on January 6th, 2022, after he was alleged to have hit her with the towel. “I apologise with all my heart,” it read. “I promise that I will never raise my voice against you again in my entire life.”
On Monday the court was shown a photograph of the mark on Ingrid’s face. The incident led to Jakob and his two brothers ending their training relationship with Gjert and going public with their allegations. Ingrid said she had not lived with her parents since.
The trial, which is due to last until May 16th, continues. – Guardian
