Cole Hocker's Chances at Worlds....

If Hocker really is a medal contender, let alone a gold contender at worlds (inside) he should be there. If he really is one of the worlds top 3 in 1500 inside he cant really continue running national meets (NCAA and Trials) but really have to step up and compete against the worlds best.

Remember Jakob more or less is just as young and raced the following last year:
Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais

European championships indoors

European championships outdoors

Diamond League

Norwegian championship
Summer Olympics

European championships cross country

All these meets (minus the Norwegian championship obviously) is against a field of world class international athletes. It is a lot harder to battle it out with Timothy meet after meet than to sit and kick in a 3:40:00. To be the best you have to race the best, ducking out meets and being content with sitting and kicking against others in the NCAA and in the trials doesn't cut it when people mention him as a possible medal contender.

Well I still think that his prior 12 months have been more race heavy than we are aware of. In '21 he ran 26 individual races over 800-5000m and a lot of those races were quality ones including 3 big outdoor championships ending in finals. That's a lot of running even for college kids because most college kids don't back up a collegiate season with a successful trials and then successful major outdoor championships like the Olympics. And as you pointed out he's already raced a lot this indoors - last thing he needs is a west coast flight to Europe and the time zones changes etc and the World Champs are only 4.5 months away.

I also think that the difficulty of Hocker's 2021 campaign is exaggerated. He navigated his busy season masterfully, as a pro would, avoiding blowing up and peaking right when he needed to.

But come on, a lot of these races were just glorified workouts. Running 3:40 pace with a fast final 200 is not as taxing as running a fast race.

European Champs has gotten marginally better, but the competition historically hasn’t been too strong. Diamond League is where the real seasoning happens. I would like to see Cole do Diamond League, but the US-based guys often pass with an occasional one-off (see Josh Kerr, Centro some years etc). It’s Euro-centric and the Kenyans go over adding some competition. It would behoove Hoare, Teare, Hocker, Nuguse and Kerr to not dodge each other and run at Pre and 1-2 other meets. That plus Pre would be a good level of competition.

And presumably he's not improved since those training blocks? Okey.

Cant he rest when he gets old? Is he going to crawl out of his cave in 5 years fully rested?

Ingebrigtsen ran 17 races over '21 and all but one was international meets of a high level. In '19 at 19 years old he ran 26 races.

Stop lowering the bar. World class runners show up at world class events.

No.

European championships outdoors last year? Where did you watch that?

These are just excuses. They cant sit there ducking out from meeting competition. You cannot think that you magically become world class by just showing up at worlds. All other countries have no problem showing up at Diamond League. Pretend like European champs is so much worse all you want, but the reality is that its way better than whatever meets these guys go to.

Lol scratch that, point still stands though. Jakob ran 26 meets in '19 as a 18/19 year old, including the world championships. But when Hocker run some meets in his school district, then its suddenly the end of the world and a sudden need to rest up all of 2022. If he is so damn good he better show up! Show his kick!

Well don't come here and blame it on experience if he gets boxed in or takes the outer turn (like he did in that meet where he got outkicked earlier this year) at worlds. You cant expect to show up at worlds and race against Jakob, Timothy, Kerr, Katir, McSweyn, Kipsang and Simotwo and think you are going to beat them all when its a year since last time you raced against someone who held a sub 3:31 pace througout the race.

You realize this is a dumb point considering he beat the last 3 of these guys in the Olympics? The 4th didn't race the 1500, but performed worse. I thought Kerr dodged competition last year, but it didn't evidently hurt him except for possibly him nearly getting bounced from the opening rounds of the 1500. That was pretty embarrassing, but luck was on his side and he performed the next 2 rounds (with the benefit of the final turning into a fitness contest).

He will race at Pre, and that already will put him in a higher caliber pre-Championship race than last season. It'd be nice if Hoare/Kerr meet up with him at a domestic meet.

Hoare, Kerr, Hocker, and Teare could be 4 of the top 10-12 1500 guys in the world. 3/4 are located in Oregon as well, would love to see them race more often if they aren't going to go to Europe for the Diamond League.

On the positive side, Hocker and Teare certainly don't seem afraid of racing each other. Hoare isn't afraid of racing top guys, so that wouldn't be the issue for him. I think we can agree that Kerr is probably lagging the worse in this regard — just running races vs. the clock and not actual competition all of last year. Yes, he'll dabble with an indoor race, but pretty lame if he doesn't run Pre, London DL or Monaco this year.

Jakob is obviously the class of the field, but Kerr (is he running?) on a good day could take Jakob on a less than ideal one. Same with Hocker and Kerr. Kerr is better, no doubt, but Hocker could beat him if the cards fall right.
Hocker is not in the conversation to win. But 2nd or 3rd? Sure

Kerr did not run in British Champs, so I'm assuming he's not running.

0% chance as he is not running. Can delete this thread now. kthx

"Could". First they have to show up, next they have to perform. No doubts some of them could, but they have to show up and actually race the best.

What are you even saying? 3 of these guys finished in the top 11 at the Olympics, the only reason I even said "could" was to include Teare in there.