Interesting you have Chelimo in the second group. He's America's most successful distance runner of the last decade and beat Fisher at both the US Champs and Olympics last year. He's a racer.
Personally, I think there's a top 2 of Cheptegei and Ingebrigtsen who can be reliably expected to win. After them, all the guys you list have about an equal chance of getting in the medals. Even Barega is beatable by other guys in that pack, as shown by his indoor season so far.
Galen Rupp has a bronze and silver at the Olympics, multiple top 10 finishes at a decade worth of World Championships, and 3 top 2 finishes at Marathon Majors....
Even Evan Jager matches the success of Chelimo.
Chelimo has three medals from global champs (1 from World's, 2 Olympics). 3 is a bigger number than 2
It’s an exceedingly difficult task at this point, but in trying to rank the world’s top 5k guys currently I think Fisher is probably in the 6-10 range.
Let’s say, imprecisely:
1. Joshua Cheptegei 2. Jakob Ingebrigtsen 3. Selemon Barega 4. Berihu Aregawi 5. Jacob Kiplimo 6. Mohammed Ahmed 7. Grant Fisher
...
Then you have a whole host of guys who would probably take issue with this assessment, and could reasonably beat Fisher on the right day without any big surprise:
Hagos Gebrhiwet Yomif Kejelcha Getnet Wale Lamecha Girma Nicholas Kimeli Paul Chelimo Mohamed Katir Justyn Knight Birhanu Balew
His last two races (BTC time trials) have been spectacular though. He could be even better than I’m giving him credit for, and he’s a definite medal contender.
Knight, Gebrhiwet, Katir, Kimeli, and Wale all have faster 5000 PRs than Grant (most of them within the last year. He lost to all those guys plus Balew and Chelimo in Tokyo. I don't think he's ever beaten any of those guys at 5000. If he bumps anyone out I'd argue it's Ahmed given he has beaten him twice head to head this year. After that Katir because Katir seems to have lost his bottle of Michael's Special Stuff. Then maybe Chelimo.
Bowerman TC perfect-condition track meets are almost not worth looking at as far as slotting them in for world ranking purposes. All the dudes on the list ran faster in real races. Not with rabbits and wavelight. BTC also hasn't really raced much in the last 2-3 years, and when they have Grant is about the only dude that put up a result befitting their TTs in the 10,000m at Tokyo. He is fantastic, and their club is incredible, but if you could get all the guys above in a race Grant would not be in my Top 10.
So does that mean Cheptegeis WR isn’t worth a whole lot either? What about Bekele? We love to slob his knob, but dude had pacers so I guess it doesn’t count. What about every other record attempt for the last 25 years? Or is it only BTC that you take issue with, because they seem to have found more than just pieces to the puzzle and are actually beginning to put it together. Fisher is nearly a minute ahead of the 10th fastest American on the all time list. Cry about it.
There can be skepticism about Bowerman as far as how much the time trials mean as far as competitiveness globally. To be clear, people had the same doubts with Cheptegei and his 5,000m world record before he silenced them in Tokyo. It is fair to denote the difference between running for time and in an un-paced championship race.
For Fisher in the 5,000 we just haven't seen it yet. For the 10,000, the dearth of fast, paced ones on the track means we are more speculating about how Fisher will perform because we know several Ethiopians can run much faster than their PBs (based on 26:4x times with erratic pacing and 53 pt last laps).
I tend to think Ahmed should give us pretty good confidence that Fisher will at least be right there in the 5,000 in the medal hunt. My concern would be him holding onto a medal the last 200 meters but we shall see. Timing his kick correctly and positioning will be huge especially since for many of his competitors their track record is erratic/incompletee.
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