Kerr drops Eugene

UKRunner37 wrote:

Exactly, Josh Kerr beat Jakob in the one race that mattered this year, what else is there to prove.

So the 5000 at Worlds didn't matter? Or the 2000 WR? Of the 2 mile WR? Josh Kerr is the 1500 world champ but Jakob Ingebrigtsen is still going to be our #1 miler in the world.

It should be like tennis. The Grand Slams are #1 but the #1 ranking also means something.

Why are the events in the middle of the day??? Why does Eugene do this with its bad conditions??????

3k guy wrote:

Why are the events in the middle of the day??? Why does Eugene do this with its bad conditions??????

NBC has Sunday Night Football. So they won’t have it after 5pm PT. In general having a track meet in the US on the weekend during football season seems dumb to me.

But Jakob wouldn't do that, would he. It's one of those fantasy scenarios. The race will just be the usual Jakob pace-train. We know he wins those, it's boring. If the meet organisers had any balls they'd remove the pacers and put Jakob under real pressure, but it's likely that Jakob would cry and throw his toys out of the pram.

Also, do you know how much Kerr has been offered? The guy deserves to get paid.

high school xc coach wrote:

just the next guy

Just the World Champion for the next two years.

LOL

jokerclown wrote:

medal count wrote:

Which one has the gold?

who cares about some medal. that's ceremonial.

i only care about who the absolute best is in a field. measured by objective metrics.

in this sport of running, it's time.

.......

I could not disagree more. In racing, the only objective metric that counts is who crossed the line first.

And that, when it mattered, was Mr Kerr.

QED

Seems quite a while since Jakob won a global 1500 race without a pacemaker...

rojo wrote:

The observing northman wrote:

Josh the little duckling. Can’t he rest for weeks after Eugene?

God I love Jakob. I really hope he wins the Olympic 1500 gold next year.

Or maybe R. Cheruiyot or Y. Nuguse.

R. Cheruiyot looks more like Kypiegon in 2012/2013 (she was showing a lot of weakness at that time).

Ingergrigsten style became stronger but its the same style of his way of running the final EURO 2018. Higher pacing but medium finish.

UKRunner37 wrote:

Seems quite a while since Jakob won a global 1500 race without a pacemaker...

He's 1 for 5 since 2019

what does world champion for the next 2 years even mean?

does it mean "2 seconds slower than someone 3 years younger than you"

if jakob wins the olympic finals next year and gets a 3:26.XX PB, does josh kerr's "world champion for the next 2 years" even mean anything at that point?

this is what is f*cked with this sport. the spectators are trained to value the current world/olympic champion, even if everyone knows they are not actually the *best* runner.

look at centrowitz. his crowning achievement is olympic gold, which is the highest in the sport. but everyone knows that he is, and was never, the best. he won a race on tactics.

that's why i never understood why he had so many fans based on his skill level (personality is different thing altogether)

when german fernandez used to run in high school/college/pro, he was legitimate #1. he won the championships in XC/track and no one doubted his skill, because his times matched. when he was an 18 year old freshman (he was younger than his grade level) i remember seeing him run 13:25 5k at the stanford invite alongside evan jager and chris derrick.

everyone in the us track scene knew chris derrick and german fernandez were the best collegiate prospects because their times backed them up. same thing with lukas verzbicas later on (before he retired) because he was the first and only high school to run sub 8:30 as a high schooler.

makhloufi is a good example of what kerr is. he is fast, and a great championship racer/tactician with one of the best kicks, but not the *best*

Oh wow, this IS the tone on this board. Adult men accusing each other of being "fanboys" and hating on each other and athletes?
Can this topic not be discussed a little less emotional?

Aaanyway, since I registered yesterday to "defend" Jakob, I will just play along.
I do think Kerr is ducking and would have found it more in line with his confident winner attitude (he obviously wants to display and establish) if he had been up for the challenge in Eugene.
I also understand his reasoning, wanting to end the season on a high. I find it indeed funny that he says Zurich took too much out of him (frontrunning once and he's destroyed) when he was fine running that 5th Ave race?
But it's honest when he says he is mentally and physically drained after Budapest.
Why do athletes get bashed when they admit to being human and not a machine?

I also don't get all the flak Jakob got for saying he was sick at worlds. He seems pretty
honest. He might not be the most gracious in defeat, but he pretty much always seems to analyze what went wrong and reply accordingly.
It was obvious he was not well, from the way he carried himself, the way he ran and also how he behaved in the 5k. Some said even if he really was sick, he should have kept that to himself and not use as an "excuse"? But I think it is pretty normal that an athlete will disclose what was going on and explain a bad or unusual performance. Why on earth should he pretend to be healthy and claim he was just slow? Would that make the haters feel better?

This is such a weird sentiment. Why does Jakob take all the flack for not being able to win without a pacer when nobody else can either? Josh Kerr certainly can’t as we saw in Zurich. It’s like you guys forget that everyone in the field benefits from being paced.

We used to hate on people for sitting and kicking, and now that we have a guy who loves to front run, we hate on him for not sitting and kicking. I don’t understand it.

High hopes wrote:

But Jakob wouldn't do that, would he. It's one of those fantasy scenarios. The race will just be the usual Jakob pace-train. We know he wins those, it's boring. If the meet organisers had any balls they'd remove the pacers and put Jakob under real pressure, but it's likely that Jakob would cry and throw his toys out of the pram.

Also, do you know how much Kerr has been offered? The guy deserves to get paid.

I don’t think Jakob can run 3.26.0 alone (neither could El Guerrouj). But (based on old and newer interviews) I think he has a dream of running fast without tactics or pacers -being so good that he just outruns everybody else… And I also think he believed he could do that in Budapest (before being sick) -just taking the lead after 150m and solo 3.26.5 / 3.27.0. And in that scenario I think Kerr would have done around 3.30 -approximately 3 sec behind Jakob…

Jakob was obviously sick in Budapest. No way he should have run slower than 3.27.0 in the final solo (given his Silesia run on a bad day with almost no help from the pacers, and his playful peak showing in the semifinals)… Kerr is an elegant athlete, but he and Jakob isn’t even in the same sport or ball game… And to compare with last year is bs in my opinion -Wightman won that year fair and square; Jakob is on another planet this year…!

rojo wrote:

UKRunner37 wrote:

Exactly, Josh Kerr beat Jakob in the one race that mattered this year, what else is there to prove.

So the 5000 at Worlds didn't matter? Or the 2000 WR? Of the 2 mile WR? Josh Kerr is the 1500 world champ but Jakob Ingebrigtsen is still going to be our #1 miler in the world.

It should be like tennis. The Grand Slams are #1 but the #1 ranking also means something.

All those other races are not 1500's or Mile's

so many people on this thread are a joke.

Everyone counted him out early season, he peaked perfectly for Worlds, wins, and now is going to take the down-time he's entitled to. He's not going to go head-to-head at every opportunity vs Jakob for the rest of his career, but he did it on the occasion that mattered.

You can either be Jakob being a world beater apart from when it counts
or you can be Kerr, in the pack until the big occasion and grab the title.

kerr probably committed to new york with his sponsors.

and ran 347 in the rain.

i think he said he was very tired.

so obviously he feels past peak and cant climb the mountain again.

so he is ducking

and admits it.

wed be there if he had his A+ game

He doesn't want to lose to Jakob for sure. Trying to savor the 1500 win.

understanding kerr wrote:

and ran 347 in the rain.

i think he said he was very tired.

3:47 in the rain doesn't sound tired to me. If he chose the dl final instead of this, then he'd be even fresher. He's ducking 100%.

UKRunner37 wrote:

Seems quite a while since Jakob won a global 1500 race without a pacemaker...

My thoughts here. Jakob being the "#1 miler" is not as clear to me. There has not been a race in recent memory where Jakob was not swept away by pacemakers to the win. 22 worlds felt like a fluke, but now that Kerr beat him this year, it feels much less so. How "unbeatable" is he really, when he doesn't have pacemakers or Cheriyot to act like a pacer?

It does feel like Kerr is ducking, but it doesn't really take anything away from his win for me. Sure, it would be awesome if Kerr took Jakob on and beat him again, but he has the right to deny Jakob the chance to race him again. If he lost to Kerr, the media would most certainly take that as Jakob being superior and add an asterisk to Kerr's title.