To me, the bottom line has always been that Jakob has 4 guys
(1) Kerr, (2)🪿
(3) Hocker
(4)🥔
who can hang with his front-running pace. If he tries to front-run the race from early on, the probability that at least 1 of these other guys feels good enough to surge past him the last 200m is super high, just mathematically.
Both Kerr and ingebrigsten looked nervous. Truth be told deep down I think they’re both worried the other will pip them at the post. It’s obviously between them two and it’s obviously going to be very close. I’d give maybe a 10% chance of someone else winning. If the race is slow or they both take it out very hard and try to stop the other overtaking then someone else could take it. After Jakobs 3:26.7 he ran last month we know he’s in top form however Danny Mackey said that Josh recently ran one of his key workouts the fastest he’s ever run it. This tells us Josh is also in top shape. Josh is obviously in under 3:28 time trial shape I’m not sure if he’s under 3:27 however this is the Olympics not a time trial and Josh has a slightly better kick than Jakob. I listened to Steve cram in the commentary and he hinted that he thinks the same style of race will happen in the final. I think he’s probably right. I think Kerr might pull a switcheroo and also go to the back with ingebrigsten in the final. I think the main determiner of the winner is whoever conserves energy the best so doesn’t go out hard at the very start, gets a bit of draft, crucially whoever avoids running extra distance by minimising being on the outside at the curves and it’s also very important t to not get too cramped up in a group because you have to adjust your stride pattern and jostle around which is inefficient. Because the final is so deep though they might struggle to move up to the front after the first lap or so. I could see Jakob trying to front run but going slower than usual on the first half then ripping the last half with an increase in pace for every 200m split . It’ll be close but I’ll pick Kerr to win at 50% chance Jakob at 40%. One slightly worrying thing for Jakob was his diamond league performance against cheriyout, the one before Monaco so a couple of months ago. It was a 3:30 race or something so a bit slower and cheriyout really nearly out kicked jakob at the end. We know he is fitter now but I don’t think Jakob can lead from the start and I don’t think he can let the pace be slow.
NGL if I were Jakob, I might actually just let someone take the lead. I mean, for him, it's either gold or nothing as he already had the gold before. I'm pretty sure Kerr would be forced to take the lead, because he sure as well doesn't want the pace to be slow and he's the one who really needs that gold.
If JI takes the lead, while he can guarantee a silver minimum, it's extremely unlikely he could run away from Kerr, but if he doesn't do that, he may be able to reverse the whole situation, and the pressure would be back on Kerr, and Kerr would be the de facto pacer.
If neither Jakob nor Kerr make it a super fast race, Hocker will win.