Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:
chiming in wrote:reminds me of a young Ovett
he's surely also taking a cue from Bolt
Not what I would want to see, but I can't blame him.
Yeah, I like Ovett but he got way too arrogant in 1980, his I LOVE U stuff must have really fired him up Coe for the 1500m, he tried celebrating in a race straight after Moscow and got beaten on the line.
Bolt and Val Adams are the only 2 athletes I can remember that dominated junior levels and the same at senior. Though in Bolt's case it was a 5 year gap.
Ingebrightsen's problem is he might not have the speed when he is older that someone his age who runs 800m might currently be developing. His body is still filling out.
How are Bolt and Val Adams the only two cases you can think of? Nijel amos is about as on fire as anyone and he was barely 19 when he ran 1:41. yuriy borzakosky was a jr athlete when he medaled in 2000. For the young kids like you, borzakosky was a 7 time global championship medalist, including olympic gold and world indoors gold. He also competed as far out as Daegu (where he got a bronze medal!).
Here are some times and ages. you tell me if these guys were ever dominant at the world level:
Steve cram - 3:40 @ 17 years
Rui Silva - 3:40 @ 18 years
Bob Tahri - 7:48/13:42 @ 18 years old
steve ovett 1:45 @ 18 years old
Kenny Bekky 13:20 @ 18 years old
I am not saying this list is exhaustive or that there are not burn outs but to suggest that 2 athletes ever have gone big time after dominating the juniors is ridiculous. this kid is an extreme talent. It is a long way to 12:5X/3:30/8:10sc from his current level of performance but it seems like he has some good coaching and he has a lot of time to get there. Every athlete has a different timeline. Maybe his career will be prolific and we will see him on the world scene for the next 15 years. Maybe he peaks next year. Either way Im looking forward to see what kind of special performances he can post in his upcoming races.
I will note that it is difficult to say what will become of Jakob. He is hardly a precedented case. On the world youth and junior scene, we see so many east africans of questionable age that it is hard to say what the realistic career trajectory is for a 17 or 18 year old running amongst the best in the world. The current WJR holders in the 1500/mile ended up being nobodies but it seems likely they were really older athletes in their prime. Moreover, many of these athletes are running 12:5X (Isaiah Koech, for example). The career trajectory of someone 30+ seconds is apples to oranges in that instance.
If we were to compare his times to US JR athletes, then we have names like Tom Byers, Alan Webb, Jim Ryun, John Trautmann. I think Jakob is probably better than some of these names and clearly the results posted by these guys after their US JR careers were mixed to say the least. However, with the exception of Ryun, they were all able to continue competing at a high level. I think there is this notion of presumed success for these very young athletes that should be done away with. what we ware more than likely really seeing is the athletes who fell into the correct coaching environment at a younger age. I dont think it precludes their success at a later time but its hard to compare them to their peers who have had inferior training throughout their early careers. Many are quick to say that they were better being undertrained but there is little evidence to support that. Just as many, if not more, athletes burn out or fail to find success who were untrained at a young age but you never heard of them because they never won a national title/world title/etc. They never got the form to do it.