strike while the iron is hot wrote:
Preface by saying I would love for Hobbs to have a long, progressive career. But also, Murphy ran 142.9 and 336 at 21 in 2016 and hasn't ran faster. So let's slow our roll here. Many trajectories in play.
Regardless, Hobbs should strike while the iron is hot & capitalize bc form is fickle and you never know of you'll have THIS form again.
Ok to be fair it's insanely hard to improve from 1:42.9 for Olympic bronze. Also, 5 years after that he ran 1:43.0 to win the Olympic trials. He didn't put it together for the Olympics that year, but he'd have won if he ran his Trials race there.
Also, I think a lot of people (read: me) put a lot of stock in Warhurst's track record. Willis broke 4 for like 20 years straight, and (more impressively imo) ran 3:36 in 2003 and 3:35 in 2021.
As for Hobbs, it looks like he's in 1:43 low/3:29 low shape at worst. In his 3rd race in 4 days, he ran 3:31 with a 53 last lap, and in his 5th race in a week he ran 1:43.7. If he just held this form for the rest of his career (as a 21 year old, he has at least until the 2032 Olympics), he'll almost certainly win at least one medal outdoors (keep in mind he's already won gold in the road mile and bronze in the 1500i).
I still agree with you that he should strike while the iron is hot. You never know when you'll trip over your dog and have a career ending injury, and he is in a form that VERY few people, regardless of nationality, have ever been in.
At the same time, if I could make the best athlete possible from scratch, I'd want someone who showed a ton of athletic prowess from a young age, ideally not just on the track. Then I'd want them to train with a great coach, mentors, and great training partners starting in middle school or high school. I'd want them to break a national record or two in HS. I'd want them to skip out on the NCAA and continue training with the same coach. I'd want to see consistent progression, stacking years and years of healthy training on top of each other. I'd want to see them competitively racing against the best in the world in their early 20s.
And Kessler ticks all of those boxes. He was a world class junior climber. He started training under Ron Warhurst as a 16 year old (a little late but that's ok), with Nick Willis, an Olympic Champion, there not just to mentor him, but also to train with him, in the twilight of his career trying to make 1 more Olympic team that had a qualifying standard that was just faster than the HS mile record. He not only broke one of the most impressive HS records, he shattered it, and ran faster than the collegiate record. He went pro out of HS but did a semester at NAU before going back to Ron (at least he got time at altitude). In 2022 he didn't run faster, but he made a lot of progress mentally during his first year as a pro, and he still ran like 3 of the fastest U20 times that weren't run by himself (and still ran a 1:46 pb). The last two years he's run 1:45/3:32 and 1:43/3:31. He won the road mile WCs at age 20, got bronze at World Indoors at age 20, and made his first Olympic team at age 21.
Without Kessler, I'm not even sure if I'd know to add some of those boxes because I wouldn't have even thought of the possibility of having a massive talent train with/be mentored by an Olympic Champion in the twilight of their career, who was trying to run similar times after one of the longest, most successful careers in athletics history. If anyone was gonna keep progressing, it would be him.
