Jakob's time was the 25th fastest 1500 ever, that is obviously extremely good and the top 25 fastest 1500 times are held by 9 men, 4 of them are Jakob's times.
The top 3 in the olympic final ran times that are equal 17th, 20th and 21st fastest of all time, so ranking those runs against Jakob's, they are closer to being the best in history than his.
So the top 4 in that race now are all in the top 10 fastest 1500 guys in history.
Jakob is the best of those guys in time trials (but the 3 guys above him will hopefully get themselves into some fast races in the next month) but not as good as championship 1500s it seems.
Leading the race for the first 99% of the race doesn't matter, it's who crosses the line first that is the best on the day, it's a race, if it was a time trial they could just run 3.75 laps by themselves and record the fastest time like in cycling.
Well, if we're gona compare the race times themselves towards the all time great times, surely the context of how those times were achieve matters. Jakob front ran a 28.27. As far as I know, no one's ever run as fast as that from the front. Every other time in that range and faster has come from tucking, i.e. pacing. In championships Jakob becomes the de facto pacer.
The other guys got a better pacing for their effort than anyone could possibly dream of for that time. 1430m out of 1500m paced to 3.27. When Jakob ran his 27s (and sub) he had to do a lot more work all by himself for most of the last lap. He had wavelights, which allows the pacers to be more precise, but often the pacers have been to eager and paced too fast, so while pacers sometime failed, Jakob was hugging the light.
In this race Jakob ran attempting to destroy the field and break away early. It's a risky tactic that didn't work because of the shape the other guys now are in. Had he pulled it off, people would have said it was brilliant. These guys were pulled to their PBs by Jakob. Most (if not all) of the guys who have been PB-ing sub 3:30 the last couple of years have been pulled there by Jakob's speedshow. Kerr ran a tactically sound race with the ideal position, but still lost to Hocker who also took risk and got lucky.
No, the context doesn't matter, if you think context matters do you also think Jakob's silver medals at the last 2 world champs were better than Jake's and Josh's golds, just because he was "sick and injured" both of those times?
The second fastest 1500 man ever is Bernard Lagat, running 3:26.34, and he is the only guy in the top 7 fastest ever that did not win his personal best 1500 race, because El G was there and beat him (but that wasn't El G's fastest 1500). I just watched that race, and that would be one of the best races I have ever seen, and Lagat's performance was still crazy good, even though he was right behind El G from start to finish.
Jakob has wavelights when he goes for fast times, so he always has something to work off, if he doesn't want to have to lead he should work on his finish.
Faster times/actually winning is more impressive than leading the race early, so no, Jakob was 4th, and he ran the 4th most impressive race, the aim to to place as highly as possible, if he wants to pace, good for him because I'm sure he can make lots of money in the diamond league pacing.
I don't understand the continued Jakob adulation. Read the comments he's made about his fellow competitors dating back to 2022 (with his salty comments when Wightman beat him). Ego, ego, ego. Only to lose in exactly the manner Kerr said he would.
A really epic run by Hocker. He made all the right moves at the right time (except, perhaps, getting slightly baulked with 100m to go). I knew he was the danger at the bell, but I was still shocked. Both Kerr and Ingebrigtsen magnanimous in defeat, which was good to see.