Well I guess Jakob, the 1:46.44 guy, should try sitting and kicking on the field next time and see how it goes then. Certainly trying to run fast isn’t working for him. Wonder why he keeps trying that…
bahahahahaha you can’t be serious. Yeah I guess the day Jakob ran 3:27.14, where he averaged 1:50.4 through 800 and ran a sub 1:50 final 800, was only capable of a 1:46 that day as well 😂
Josh kerr did not run a 52 last lap 😂. I timed the last lap multiple times and it was consistently across the board close to 53.6 with Jakob right around or just under 54
Apologies I meant 53.6 but either way it’s not a maximally paced 1500 and he ran a little extra on the last bend. So the point is that in that fitness Kerr had probably a little more to give in an evenly paced race.
There is zero chance of Girma running anywhere near 4:43, and he’s no better than Kejelcha (who is worse than Jakob) at 3k/2 mi.
Nuguse is the best bet at 2k and he might run 4:46.
To your earlier comment, Jakob was almost 2 seconds faster than the next fastest guy in the Budapest field (3:27.1 vs 3:29.0). Surely that’s a larger margin than Tim had in Doha.
I wouldn’t presume a great 2k for Girma and never said as much.
I think he would be better at 3k than Kejelcha if that was his sole focus. 7:23.81i and he has superior speed to Yomif.
Jakob had that margin, but that’s to Kipsang who was the only guy in that Silesia race. Nuguse showed a higher ceiling at Pre and Kerr did as well in Budapest closing in 53.6 with some extra distance in a championship final. Whereas in Tim’s case, nobody flashed that sort of form at any point.
This is about how often Jakob beats those guys in races. Not about how many 1st place finishes he has.
Even just looking at championship head-to-heads:
Jakob 3 Tefera 1
Jakob 3 Cheruiyot 1
Jakob 3 Wightman 1
Jakob 5 Kerr 1 (4-1 if you only want to look at the 1500, the other was European XC)
And in those races that Jakob lost, he was right behind them! Except for Cheruiyot in 2019. The same isn't true for most of Jakob's victories over them (eg. Jakob 1st, Jake 10th in Tokyo). So he is by far the best championship racer out of all of them.
Throw Diamond Leagues into the mix and you can see why he's so confident that he's better than these guys.
Eh even that is too simplistic, because for some of those wins vs them he was able to avoid leading because of Cheruyiot.
the relevant question for the next 2-4 years is this: if he is forced to lead early, can he rub fast enough so they don’t out kick him? He is not 3-1 or 5-1 under those circumstances and I don’t think we know if he can improve the odds.
Nonsense. So none of Jakob's victories count because he didn't front run from gun to tape? Why is that the criteria for a valid victory? If that's the case they're all 0-0 against eachother (0-1 against Cheruiyot).
Almost no athlete in history has front run a global 1500m final and managed to win. Jakob does it because it increases his odds. But it's not like he can't win slower races. He won the 2018 European Champs as a 17 year old in a 3:38 tactical race. Outkicking 800 guys like Lewandowski and Wightman. It's doable but far more can go wrong. At least when he front runs, at worst, one person manages to get past him.
By far most important segment of that article is that the achilles apparently isn't as serious as many were suggesting. Hence the bitter tone from many commenters in this thread. The final pages of the other thread had become downright gleeful, with some geniuses seriously suggesting that Jakob should skip 2024.
Now you have to deal with the big guy and that means likely defeat. I'll stick to my Kansas City Chiefs analogy of a few days ago. Those regular season defeats meant squat toward foundational playoff realities, just like Eugene and Budapest mean squat toward Paris.
Talent over tactics
I don't mind the hyperbole of 98 out of 100. That's classic Jakob. He knows 20 or 30 aren't memorable reference points, just like the 1500 carries more weight than other events. It's not a headline if Jakob says I know I can beat them 17 out of 19.
Why is Tim Cheruiyot being mentioned so frequently? We've still got a few posters here who can't let go that his peak has passed, and they begrudge any elevation of Jakob that doesn't spotlight Tim alongside.
In months it will be Jakob 2-1 over Tim and 2-0 over those other guys. I'm sure Kerr will enjoy being announced as reigning world champion in Tokyo 2025.
Eh even that is too simplistic, because for some of those wins vs them he was able to avoid leading because of Cheruyiot.
the relevant question for the next 2-4 years is this: if he is forced to lead early, can he rub fast enough so they don’t out kick him? He is not 3-1 or 5-1 under those circumstances and I don’t think we know if he can improve the odds.
Nonsense. So none of Jakob's victories count because he didn't front run from gun to tape? Why is that the criteria for a valid victory? If that's the case they're all 0-0 against eachother (0-1 against Cheruiyot).
Almost no athlete in history has front run a global 1500m final and managed to win. Jakob does it because it increases his odds. But it's not like he can't win slower races. He won the 2018 European Champs as a 17 year old in a 3:38 tactical race. Outkicking 800 guys like Lewandowski and Wightman. It's doable but far more can go wrong. At least when he front runs, at worst, one person manages to get past him.
They count but it’s different and anyone suggesting otherwise is, I guess, just ignoring the last 3 years.
The biggest question I think is if he is good enough to be able to ratchet the pace from 700 out. It seems like he tried that in Budapest (albeit with 1100 to go and under sickness). El Guerrouj was able to do it successfully but I mean he also had no real competitors other than lagat ngeny and like… estevez maybe.
Rewatch the 2001 and 2003 world championships. The splits are almost identical to Budapest through 1100 and 1200 yet nobody went with Hicham. Its actually incredible what Kerr did to Ingebrigtsen who closed even faster then el guerrouj in these identical races.
Bet he'd trade 97 of those for the 2 that they won
I doubt that. Would you? Which one of these scenarios is the better one?
You can be Kerr/Wightman and peak perfectly for the best race of your life and barely beat Jakob for the WC win. But the rest of your career you have to live in his shadow as he dominates you.
Or you can be Jakob with the Olympic 1500m Gold, the fastest mile of the last 25 years, and two golds in the WC 5000m. You get to be the king of the sport by winning almost every single race you enter including the whole Diamond League. You also get to have the faster PRs and the longer career.
You'd really trade all that for those two World Champs medals? Jakob is not exactly low on championship medals...
And if you had to bet $10,000 dollars on the Olympic 1500, who would you put your money on? We would all pick Jakob. That is just common sense. You might lose, but it would be a safer bet than Wighman or Kerr or anyone else...
If we assume that Jakob really does win 98/100 times against Wightman and Kerr (I'm also assuming he meant specifically in world finals), the probability of him losing twice in a row in two world finals against the two is 0.0004. That is, 0.04 %.
(Binomial distribution; chance of an event occurring is 2/100; it happened twice in two trials).
I'm thinking Jakob doesn't win 98/100 times against them.
If we assume that Jakob really does win 98/100 times against Wightman and Kerr (I'm also assuming he meant specifically in world finals), the probability of him losing twice in a row in two world finals against the two is 0.0004. That is, 0.04 %.
(Binomial distribution; chance of an event occurring is 2/100; it happened twice in two trials).
I'm thinking Jakob doesn't win 98/100 times against them.
I'm an idiot and didn't read the thread beforehand. Someone already got this on page 2!
He's raced them since he was 15 and has been beating them in championship level races for many years including the 2019 world champs and the 2020/21 Olympics and many European Championships starting when he was 17.
Jakob finished in 52 when he won gold in the 5,000, his 2nd 5,000 gold by the way and his finish in the Olympic 1500 was amazing, he could have run 3:27 that day!