First of all: I’d love for all three records to be broken, because witnessing a world record is a privilege. I don’t care if it’s a European, an African, an American, or a New Zealander.
Well, actually, I’d prefer it to be Jakob in all of them because that would be legendary.
There’s been a lot of debate on this forum about whether he’s past his peak, if he’ll never get back to his 2024 form... no one really knows that. The only factual thing we can say (even though correlation doesn't mean causation and all that) is that the current and/or recent records in this era in the 1500, the mile, and the 5000 were set by athletes who were even younger than him.
Jakob is very young (he’ll be 26 or about to turn 26) in a sport where the absolute top level seems to happen at an absurdly even younger age.
5000 WR
I had my doubts, but several users here have convinced me that Jakob is the best-suited athlete in history to sustain 60" laps.
And he could also set a time trial under better conditions: the last pacer dropped Joshua before 2500m, and he ran the fastest laps alone.
It would be an insane performance because, when they set their WRs/PBs, Bekele was 23, Chep 23, Komen 21, and only Geb was 25.*
1500 WR
Jakob won't get better conditions: El G had perfect pacing up to about 1200m and flawless splits.
He was 23 years old. Beating that record at 26-ish (Lagat's PB came at that age) would be beyond awesome.
MILE WR
It’s considered a slightly weaker record than the 1500 according to the scoring tables**, but it was set in a race that went all the way to a final sprint against Ngeny. Those conditions are practically impossible for Jakob to replicate.
El G was 24 years old.
*I know I’ve left out Hagos (who was 30), but that was because his PB came in the greatest 5000m race in history. And Kejelcha was 26. Expecting to replicate that unicorn race without Aregawi, Kiplimo, Barega, Kejelcha himself... would be naïve.
**For those of you who have competed at a decent level in the 1500/mile: can you confirm that your mile PBs are actually closer to El G’s ratio compared to your 1500s?
TL;DR: Like most people, I think Jakob’s best chances are in the 5000. And I’m not talking about flirting with 12:30. I mean running at WR pace all the way to the last lap and closing faster than Joshua, who “only” managed a 59.64 finish.
If he were to break any of these WRs, it wouldn’t just be the best performance ever in those distances -duh- but even more outlier and extraordinary for achieving it at, or very close to, 26 years old.