OK, I'm not a fan of his consistent arrogance, but by no means am I a Jakob-hater: I admire his consistent willingness to turn up and race, like McSweyn I enjoy how he rarely lets a 1500 be slow and is never afraid to front-run, and I respect what he has done both for the event, but also his influence on training methods for seemingly most pro's and club runners nowadays (not saying he invented double-T ofc). That being said...
These excuses have to stop. The injury over the winter was obviously serious and he's done very well to come back from that + run a 3:45 mile so soon after, but outside of that, every time he gets beaten there is some underlying excuse, and it's moved from reactionary comments to now preemptively before the race. And I think this has done exactly as intended because I listened to the LR post-race recap last night and Rojo and Jon both weren't objective in their assessment of this race, because they'd heard before it that he had been somewhat ill, so within the first 300m had written off the race as 'yeah but he's ill'.
Covid, Illness, Covid, infection. I cant even be bothered to go back and find all the different excuses but there has been one for every single loss.
Sometimes your legs just aren't there on the day, sometimes you mess your taper, sometime others are just better at peaking for a single event, but Jakob cant accept that, or the fact that anyone else could beat him fairly, every time has to be caveated by him being afflicted by something, or taking shots that he led them for most the race. Do you know how many of Jakob's competitors turn up to events when they've been ill or carrying a niggle? No, because they don't immediately run to the press room to tell everyone to sooth their own ego.
Pre-race press conference, post-race interview(s), IG post the same night, all making sure everyone knows that this result doesnt count because he was ill. Do you know who else was ill the other week? NUGUSE.
This feels like Eliud after he lost London or Boston. He's undoubtedly one of the best athletes and 8-9x/10 will win the race, but he is not invincible, and just as we saw Eliud falter in some races and a new 2:00 kid appear on the scene, Jakob is not some undisputed and infallible racer, but he can't seem to process that so he puts an asterisk next to any loss. This is some real freshman behaviour and I'm bored of it because you hear endlessly the same childish attitude from hobbyjoggers at your local race who have to come up with some convoluted reason why they weren't amazing that day.