Friendly reminder to Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman, Centrowitz won World Indoors and Olympics in 2016. The sport needs you there

Wow, what a very dutiful piece from you dearest Rojo!

You have showcased to me your studiousness and competence in the realm of psychoanalysis and rubbing shoulders with me who is also a very competent psychoanalyst with an RF propensity!

Yes I really agree with you that Jakob would really feel absent and snubbed if he were to arrive in Scotland next March 2024 to find 2 of his former vanquishers literally vanishing out of sight of the championships lol!!!

I don't know why Danny Mackey would find the world indoors so objectionable in space-time vis a vis the Paris Olympics in July/August 2024? There are 4/5 months apart and more than enough time to prepare for? It could be a concern of Josh and Wightman getting afflicted with injury due to participation at these world indoors? That's the only thing I can think of.

However, I do feel that if Danny feels that Josh and Wightman are injury prone due to these world indoors then might they be inherently (environmentally/naturally) already predisposed to being injured rather than a belief based on superstition or fear-mongering?

You want Kerr and Wightman to show up?

Ask Jakob to race only 3000.

I’d love to see the matchup of Kerr vs Wightman vs Jakob, all 3 healthy, but am concerned the Brits (including Gourley and the other next guy) will employ team tactics that are difficult to counter on a small indoor track. Perhaps Nuguse will be Jakob’s caboose and use his long stride to keep the redcoats at bay.

It’s obvious Kerr doesn’t want to run in Glasgow but can’t come out and say it, so instead we get this fabricated conversation between him and his coach about how difficult the decision is. For him to imply that by racing World Indoors he runs the risk of not even making the Olympics is ludicrous.

It’s weird that a self-proclaimed championship racer like Kerr is chasing the indoor 2 mile record but won’t be showing up to the global championships that his own country is hosting. I can’t imagine who he’s trying to avoid…

If Kerr cant race at the world champs 5 months before the Olympics I will think less of him as an athlete. Especially after all the crap hes been talking about Jakob. (which I think is good for the sport, and not untrue) Jakob does show up and race quite a bit, more so than Kerr and most Americans.

The notion that olympics/worlds is the only thing that matters is bad for the fans and the athletes and really quite strange.

Most of us as runners realize if you have 10 guys who are pretty close race 10 times there will be many different results. The most sane way to see through that chaos is have people race a lot and who averages out on top you could say is the best. And this is sort of what happens in the diamond league.

Pick one race olympic finals/world finals and say that is the absolute race, someone is bound to have an off day. I do like putting more importance on one race with rounds and no pacers at a big event and saying that has more importance but I think the pendulum has swung too far in that direction. Perhaps it has to do with contract incentives, I imagine Jager did pretty well with those medals financially, but if he would have raced a bit more do you think he would have not won those medals?

Kerr won worlds last year and that was exciting. Did he have a better year than Jakob (even just in the 1500/mile). Most sane people would say no. If Jakob wins every race next year and looses again at Olympic 1500 what does is mean?

Last year was exciting on the diamond league as many top 1500 runners were racing a lot the top 5000 guys were racing a lot and throwing down.

If all of those guys (ie. ethiopian 5k guys, spanish 1500m guys) raced less to focus on worlds would they have done better at worlds? Maybe but then they wouldn't have run those blazing times at the diamond league which are more impressive (to me) that getting a worlds bronze.

Interesting discussion with no absolute right answer, but I think you got to show up for the worlds indoor 1500m. It would be tactical and the best training for olympic 1500

Only on letsrun will people bash athletes for not running events that nobody cares about except themselves. They aren't your puppets.

If he skips Glasgow, that proves he'll never deserve a personality award.

If he runs Glasgow, wins, and then wins another gold in Paris, he'll deserve the 2024 personality award.

i just dont understand what he gains by ducking. He's the underdog in any race against jakob, but close enough to spring the odd upset- it seems like all upside

If Kerr or Wightman skip World Indoors, I might turn into a hater. Kerr especially, because I know I've heard him talk about popularizing the sport. Kerr is:

• The reigning World Champion
• Targeting the 2 mile WR, building strength to beat Jakob in a championship race
• Saying he's been targeting this Olympic year for 12 years
• Going to chase the WR 3 weeks before World Indoors, where peak Jakob, the reigning Olympic champ, will be in a championship race
• Saying he wants to popularize the sport
• Dodging Jakob at the biggest meet of the season, when Kerr plans on being in WR shape, even though Jakob is the biggest name, and best in the world, and the meet is being held in his home country

That's comically hypocritical. If Kerr breaks the WR, but skips World Indoors 3 weeks later, I'm not even sure an Olympic Gold would let me look past it. Like, if you're in WR shape, running World Indoors will not make your Olympic performance worse. He's just scared to get beat. As much as I hate Sydney McLaughlin's approach (don't race all season, get injured before Worlds, don't race after Worlds), at least I don't hear her talk about trying to promote the sport.

Josh Kerr: "I'm devastated not to be nominated for British sports personality of the year"

Also Josh Kerr: "I'm skipping a 1500m Championship in my home country due to the pressing need to be peaked in six months time but also I can run a time trial in NYC two weeks prior no problem guys."

C'mon dude. The criticism writes itself.

Can you even imagine Jakob skipping world indoors if it was hosted in Oslo?

LOL

Is Wightman still injured? That’s an acceptable excuse for skipping. Haven’t seen him race in what feels like forever.

Wightman is more defensible in that we’ll see if he’s even in shape by then. He’s got a fair bit of catching up to do. I know he has Boston announced but that’s a sponsorship obligation, and I’m not sure he’d be fit enough to make the British 1500 squad…I guess we’ll see.

Kerr, he just only cares about one race per season whether he wants to pretend Mackey is at fault or not. He’s built up in his head an obsession with peaking and everything being fixated around the one race. His excuse for not running the far more prestigious and consequential Wanamaker mile is that in the winter he’s working to his peak 5k shape. Yet he could run a faster and more competitive 3k in Lieven instead of the Millrose 2 mile. Two factors: stronger competition (likely a big defeat), he can’t skip Millrose with Ray Flynn as his agent and being US-based. Now, with a home World Indoors, why not just run the 3k in Glasgow? Would he even have to do British trials? And it’s 2 easy rounds with no expectation he wins and a medal looked on as major success in a secondary event that he’s in prime shape to do. Well, Jakob could be there for one and if he doesn’t medal he doesn’t want to deal with that. So instead, a random 5k and a couple 800s in the US is what we’ll get after Millrose. I just think he should be transparent and own that this is his philosophy and not act like Mackey or the demands of the sport have anything to do with it.

Jake Wightman won't do World Indoors. I asked his dad/coach Geoff whether he would run it and he said no. This was Geoff's explanation:

"Jake ran World Indoors in 2018 in Birmingham and finished sixth. That was when the Commonwealth Games was in Gold Coast the following month. When he targeted the European Indoors in Glasgow in 2019 he picked up his first major injury - a stress fracture of the sacrum just before Christmas. We have therefore stuck to a 2-3 race indoor season ever since. And with the cancellation of the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix in February, it should be one race indoors at NBIGP Boston and two in Australia outdoors in Feb/Mar. The target will also be to try and secure Paris qualifying time early, having missed the whole year."

Good info. I give Wightman more of a pass due to his recent injury saga. I don’t think it’s realistic to think he’d be in shape to contend for the medals without taking some risks in training.

Is Jakob confirmed for World Indoors? In an interview, I think he said he only does Indoors and XC if training is going well and he's not injured... which unfortunately seems to be the case right now.

He's not confirmed for it yet and his current injury is not a great sign for his prospects of doing it. But since 2019, Jakob has always run either Euro Indoors or World Indoors during the winter.

If he trained on the West Coast like Kerr, yes.

That's a tough decision. If World Indoors was a week after Milrose and had no rounds, I'd say why not? 3 weeks later means sacrificing 3 weeks of Olympic preparation for something who's importance pales next to the Olympics. I doubt Kerr would even be considering World Indoors if it wasn't being held in Scotland. There's also the lose-lose scenario: Kerr runs World Indoors, loses, then loses the Olympics because he didn't devote himself completely to Olympic preparation. It would be hard to stomach losing the Olympics in your prime knowing you didn't put 100% into winning.