Jakob Ingebrigtsten: "I would've beaten [Josh Kerr] at Millrose blindfolded"

What is the chance of Jakob soloing a WR in a humid final after rounds of racing and knowing he was sniped twice in previous WC finals for setting a fast pace? While it may be possible that both Goose and Kerr get in WR shape, they'd need absolutely perfect pacing from Jakob. BUT it's going to be a tactical race because those guys can keep up with Jakob and expect him to take it out hard. So either they sit and kick or he sits and kicks.

In other words, that race will not produce a WR.

Annihilation is unlikely to happen. Even beating him may not be as likely as you may think.

I think one consideration that goes into how Jakob runs in Paris is Stewy. He hasn't really been a factor in the last 2 champs on the comeback from injuries and whatnot, but he looked good against Wightman recently. If he's in good shape and sticks to his old tactics, Jakob may have someone to help make it a 3:28 race instead of 3:29.

Will be interesting to see if that would benefit him or not. Knowing that Yared is also a 3:43 guy, maybe we'd just see a repeat of the past 2 years but with a faster guy sitting on him until the last 200.

Would Josh "3:27" Kerr be able to follow at that pace?

I'm not entirely sure McSweyn would push the pace because he didn't seem to do so in the Tokyo Final. I think he only does that if he knows no one else will frontrun, but he seems to expect Kipsang or Jakob to take it up first.

Good questions though.

True. Slipped my mind that it was mostly tim. Stewy was directly behind jakob for the middle two laps but never took the pace.

I wonder if jakob would even let someone take the pace anymore given his recent interviews. Kipsang may want to but not be able and Yared may be able to but not want to.