Awesome Jakob Ingebrigtsen profile in The Times: When I'm done, I want there to be no doubt I'm the GOAT.

I disagree, for my type of pristine clean moral upbringing and becoming, I instead point out in others the things I knew was subconsciously not true about myself to any degree!!!!!

Do you understand what I mean sir????

For example if I point out that a man is sexually lascivious, it's because I AM NOT SEXUALLY LASCIVIOUS myself and have terrific self-control!!!!

Another example if I point out that a man loves drinking alcohol, it's because I AM NOT DRINKING ALCOHOL EVER MYSELF IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!

So while it might be true for you, understand that it can be the direct opposite for others, like me.

So you are smarter than Jakob by revealing that his words mean confession -do you think Wada or a civil court agree in your smartness here, and will judge him based on your smart evaluations..?

I don’t agree with you here. But if you had focused on 2022 (Jakob’s words about being better than Wightman, ) then, yes, I would agree. But Jakob is a young man who evolves…

So much stock here placed in what an athlete says. None of it matters. He will be judged solely by who did he beat and what records he set. The rest is noise.

Maybe. But surely there will be a little more context.

If you don't compare different eras, you cannot, by definition, decide who the Greatest of ALL-TIME is, right?

I don't love comparing across eras, but Jakob opnened the conversation and he used medals as the metric. Certainly that is a better indicator of all-time status than time. If we only used time, then the current world record holder in every event would be considered the GOAT in that event.

I agree with you on this my dearest Armstrong. I find that Jakob really has no manners this time LOL!!!! Josh Kerr becomes proven right in space and time that Jakob lacks manners.

Can't believe Jakob meant and implied that Josh Kerr has untoward intentions towards him. I mean he won world indoors without opening his mouth at all, just came and appeared and ran first to the line!!!! It seems Jakob is largely afraid of Josh Kerr instead with his latest comments!!!!

Jakob on the other hand didn't opened his mouth before winning 2021 Tokyo Olympics, I hardly remembered he was anywhere near as provocative as he is today in 2024.

Paavo Nurmi is certainly one of the greats, but it's asinine to claim that someone who ran in the amateur era can be the greatest ever when the runners of today can beat his PB's while running in zone 3.

Don't worry about him. He is one of the Ingebriston dreams that do a lot of "maths" just to prove that evil Africans are cheater. One of the promiser of the new upcoming clean and wealthy era.

Gotta agree with this.

So, if the metric isn't medals (as Jakob implied) what is the metric that allows for fairly comparing across generations?

It can't be time. That would just mean that every world record holder is the GOAT, and would discount huge achievements from people as recently as the ten or twenty years prior.

If it is a combination of:

Olympic Medals Won

World Championship Medals Won

World Records

Breadth of distances in which there was legitimate achievement

Career Longevity...

then Nurmi is part of a conversation that you could argue Jakob isn't even included in, let alone rising to the top of.

Again, Nurmi ran against amateurs, that alone makes him not qualified to be the best ever. If Lebron James played out his entire career against college students, would that make him the greatest ever? Of course not.

There's no perfect way to compare between eras, the best way to do it is to determine who the best of each era is and then it's up to the rest to determine if they think beating amateurs, or people who ran in an era without mandatory drug testing, or the people who ran in super shoes, is the best ever.

It is asinine to compare eras solely according to time when athletes trained and competed in very different eras with very different conditions. For example, none of the athletes today whose 1500 best is 3:35 are as good as the great Herb Elliott, who did it in 1960. They are not in contention anywhere near the top today (with the recent exception of Geordie Beamish) whereas he was world record-holder and Olympic champion - and undefeated in his career over his speciality distance. Athletes ultimately have to be judged on the basis of how they did against their competition.

What evidence do you have that he has evolved?

Look I'm not saying the guy doesn't have a superior winning formula, but let's be real if anything he's displayed even more cockiness. And it could be easily argued that this psychological vulnerability of his is translating to suboptimal racing tactics. When you are the best in your sport and on top of the hill, you don't play into others' mind games.. you either pretend you don't have competition or if you don't have a terrible ego you acknowledge other athletes respectfully and wish them well (the greatest form of owning them). Jakob is not even close to being the latter yet. He's already given up some of his market share to Kerr by falling for his trap and mentioning his name in interviews. Kerr has been riding that high at Jakob's expense and asserted himself as the man to beat. Kerr is without question in his head and he better get his game up in the 1500 because he will be even more vulnerable in Paris.

Jakob is a fantastic athlete and his range is amazing, but I don't think we can start having a middle distance GOAT conversation until he's really asserted domination in the 1500... and no, that doesn't mean DL winning streaks. That means a WR and winning races that matter. His Tokyo gold was deserved in that he was the fastest runner in the field, but let's face it, he colluded with Tim to lock gold and silver going into the race. What we've seen in back to back WC 1500 finals is not a dominant runner. He needs to win a 1500 final without help, or break the WR - preferably both so there is no major asterisk next to his name. The WR has stood for 24 years. We have super shoes now, arguably better tracks and training knowledge. Don't give me the PEDs bs because if you are going to accuse the greats you cannot exclude Jakob. Put simply, he is not in El G, Morceli, or Coe territory yet.

I half agree because you could be in an era of 2 or 3 all time greats competing with each other (e.g. Roger, Rafa and Novax).

Good arguments.

Jakob followed up the loss in the 1500 by winning gold in the 5000 by outkicking the doping European record holder. At least wait for Paris before writing Jakob off as being washed in the 1500m.

Love how this thread started with praise and logic but then the same few idiots in every Jakob thread came in and ruined it

I don't think anyone is doing that. I think he has a lock on a 1500 medal which is saying a lot. Also, I am talking about the 1500... he's been absolutely dominant in 5k championship racing AND winning the 5k in Budapest doesn't make up for his loss in the 1500. He was favored in both and came up short. Again, there is no current athlete with the same dominance at his range, so this is not to diminish his overall greatness.