Sandy Bridge is a completely redesigned chip, not a Pentium Pro derivative, so it's going to have a nice improvement in single-threaded apps, for sure.
But, his claim is absolutely ludicrous. The 286 was an incredible improvement over the 8086 (and yes, it was a successor, the 186 was made in parallel with the 286 and had different design goals). Not only was it over three times faster per clock cycle, it increased addressable memory by 16 times, and added virtual memory and allowed multitasking operating systems to be effectively created for it.
Call me crazy, but I just don't think the Sandy Bridge is going to be over three times faster per clock cycle. This is not to downplay the significance of the chip, since Intel finally left the Pentium Pro behind (again), but his statement is just not correct, or even close to it.