Firstly: No freak kickers will be this in every race (not even Beamish) -there are far too much disturbance from external and coincidentally factors to have such a never fading feature…
Narve’s 1500m win in Spain wasn’t by a freakish kick, I agree in that. And I’m not surprised, because he has always needed some races to find both his kick, but also his overall speed fitness (because he doesn’t do “speedy” intervals at all).
There have always been guys who seemed to be freak kickers, but wasn’t really. I may be wrong, but I think f.ex Steve Ovett was one of those: A very good kicker if the finish time was 1 or 2 sec away from his pb / real capacity, but seldom in an all out race…
Freak(-ish) kickers are IMO guys who can even run a pb finished with a kick -a very rare breed…
I am aware of Rui Silvas amazing last lap in Athens. So let’s say that made him a freak kicker, but why is that an argument against Nordås -surely this category has place for more than just one or two or three athletes in history..! Saying that I’m not sure that this race qualifies Silva (not pb like), and maybe the only, (that) freakish, he had..?
Nordås has a lot of freakish races (kicks), f.ex some “slowish” 3000meters. The latter ones may be indicators for his freakish ability, but they may also be something most athletes can do when the average pace is slow, so I choose not to count those, here…
My point is the rare ability to kick when at pb pace in a race: Nordås has two 3.29 races -both against almost the complete world elite, and in both races he had the fastest lap of all! (Despite wide running..!). I have mentioned his WC 2023 run, but Bislett / Oslo Diamond league is also extremely striking: 300m from the finish line he is 5-6 m behind the main field of 10-12 guys (had to give this gap a lap earlier, running the race without draft for quite a bit). But on the home straight the gap has disappeared, and he is even gaining on Jakob who eases away (from the others) to a new pb. And he is very near the guys who beats him…
Well, Narve has had pb races where he wasn’t that sharp on the last lap I believe (can’t check everything; I’m not a nerd!) -f.ex in the mile and 2000m. But these were after WC, and he clearly got a reaction after the champs (a slightly down)…
Why do I write all this? Because I think running and racing and training are far far more complex (to understand) than most of us are willing to acknowledge. And therefore we get things from authority (like Cram, Wightman, Kerr) that some think is “rubbish” (Jakob, Narve, ObjectiveObserver who lately has argued convincingly, and myself). But there seems to be very individually factors we may miss -maybe Jakob and Narve (and a Beamish for that matter) shouldn’t run all alike (to get an optimal race) at all. They may have individual paces and very different lap times that suit them the best -maybe not even that bad to have to run wide on the last lap. And a WR run for Jakob may (ideally) have different splits from what most of us think…