It is far too early to do the Drew Hunter comps. People on here know I didn’t use kid gloves on Hobbs’ first pro season. But at the end of the year he put together some pretty good performances and this year is trending well ahead.
Apples and Oranges to compare to Stanford kids with different goals and situations. When he gets into faster races we’ll know more.
Even Drew really hasn’t been THAT bad. His careers been inconsistent and a little disappointing for the expectations we had, but he’s still run 3:34/7:39. He’s reached a Garrett Heath/Ben Blankenship level which is nothing for him to be ashamed of.
And I honestly think Drew’s ceiling is a 3:32/13:05 even if everything went perfect. I don’t think Drew would’ve been running Grant Fisher type times even if he had gone to the NCAA
Hunter was training much more extensively as a high schooler by all accounts. Then at Stanford, Fisher was undertrained and Hunter got injured a lot trying to go close to the intensity that Fisher has been able to do maybe from his last year or two at Stanford to present (where it’s way more intensity). Hunters not a bust but it’s a strong moment for US running in the 5,000 and he’s been hurt a lot. He’ll have to string together more healthy months of training and up his workload, but he’s gotten pretty good nonetheless.
Kessler is soon 20 and is running far slower than 19 year´s old Hocker did in the early indoor season of 2021: 3:50.55.
This is a poor comparison: Hocker was a college athlete, and would have had different goals as far as when to be in shape. Collegiates always outperform pros this early. As a pro Kessler does not need to be in shape for NCAAs.
We are still talking about a difference on 7 seconds!?
Some top runners can run top times coming almost directly from aerobic base training. Fore example: Jakob ran indoor WR in the 1500m in February last year and a very fast time in Feb 2021 as well.
This year's USA's men's 1500 will be: Nuguse, Hocker, and Kessler with Hunter 4th. With more continuity in his training, Hunter could still have some descent races left in him (he ran PRs in the mile and 1500 last year on relatively poor training). As for Kessler, this will be a breakout season. My prediction is that he will run 3:31 and make the final at Worlds. Yes, three American men will make the final.
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