This is by far the best summary. Wightman and Kerr place extreme faith in two examples. But it wasn't two examples. Jakob was clearly off in 2023. During the middle of the race I was yelling, "What is he doing?" He hadn't run like that all year.
The way he ran the 5000 was further verification that he was sick.
In 2022 there were blunders galore. Mid race and final lap. Wightman surged alongside and Jakob thought he had settled there, slightly behind. A cocky Jakob assumed the threat was over and actually turned his head left toward the infield. Wightman seized opportunity to surge again. The race was essentially over at that point.
Fast forward to 2023. Jakob wasn't going to make that mistake again. He's going to keep Kerr or anyone else at bay, like Farah did and Kipyegon does. His body wasn't up to it on the day.
IMO, he also needs to change the way he runs the heats. Kipyegon always replicates her finals strategy. Jakob for some idiotic reason thinks it's clever to hang back and run like an American. Meanwhile if he simply went to the front the field would be intimidated by him. With no time qualifiers anymore he'd get away with lots of cruising with low energy level and low stress. Forced to circle late is always stressful and injects needless variables.
The only question is whether the recent training setbacks have lessened his chance to be in 2023 form by Paris. In some ways the 2023 result actually favors Jakob in Paris because Wightman, Kerr and others assume it will favor that scenario again. Nuguse via Eugene has the best evidence of how Paris will likely unfold. You need to be fast enough to defeat Jakob at his best, and not rely on some flimsy assumption that a championship scenario changes everything.
I've worked in sports stats offices, albeit 20 years ago. I would have been laughed out of the room if I presented loud confidence in a sample of 2.