Cole Hocker stuns the world, winning gold in the men’s 1500 meters

Cole Hocker of the United States provided one of the biggest surprises in Olympic running on Tuesday night, passing Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr and beating everyone in the closing stages to win the men’s 1500 meters and turn what should have been a battle of the two into the surprise of the Games.

With a huge kick in the final 30 meters, Hocker, an Indianapolis native who grew up at the University of Oregon and has been the heart and soul of American distance running since the days of Steve Prefontaine, finished in an Olympic record 3:27.65, just under a quarter of a second faster than Kerr, the reigning world champion.

Yared Nuguse, Hocker’s American teammate, beat Ingebrigtsen to take bronze, while the reigning Olympic champion dropped to fourth after setting the pace in the first 1300 meters.

For Ingebrigtsen it was a big disappointment, given his star power and outspoken nature. He has never been shy about his confidence in his abilities.

The last runner to be announced for the race, Ingebrigtsen held up a single index number and stared at the camera for all 80,000 fans to see on the giant video boards above the purple track. He should have held up four on a night when he lost his third consecutive 1500-meter championship, including the 2022 and 2023 races at the World Athletics Championships.

On a perfect race night, with clear skies, no wind and dry and almost cool, this should have been the ultimate showdown between the imperious Ingebrigtsen and Kerr, the brash Scot who has had Ingebrigtsen’s number for years.

And so the race went down to the final bend. Ingebrigtsen, the fastest man in the field, went straight to the front and set a blazing pace, 1:51.3 for the first 800. The strategy was laced with both guts and fear. He was brave enough to attempt one of the hardest things in running, winning a race from the front, start to finish. But the move was born out of the fear of knowing that other runners could finish faster than him, that his only hope was to bury Kerr and the rest of the field far enough behind him that they would be out of bounds before they could catch him.

With 200 metres to go, he heard the noise of the crowd rising to dizzying heights. His head turned to his right and he saw Kerr approaching. By the time they reached the final straight, Kerr was well on his way to overtaking him.

Wow. 😱

A STUNNING upset in the men’s 1500m: AMERICAN COLE HOCKER takes gold! #Olympic Games in Paris photo.twitter.com/wlq81lbvSO

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 6, 2024

But so was Hocker, the former Oregon Duck showing the speed he’d shown before, but never at this level or at this pace. He was in the middle of the pack for the last 600 meters, not too close to the leaders but not too far off either, and when it was time to go, he went for it, going fast enough for both the Olympic and American records in one of the Games’ premier events.

“I told myself I’m in this race too,” Hocker said. “If they let me fly under the radar, so be it. I think that was probably for the best.”

Kerr had seen Hocker’s triumph up close. The Scot had run a personal best and set the national record, and had little to be disappointed about. But he had no idea what was happening behind him.

He looked at the scoreboard and saw that Ingebrigtsen had dropped to fourth place. A big smile appeared on his face. He looked at Hocker and Nuguse and started clapping as if they were old friends.

Neil Gourley, Kerr’s teammate in Britain, ran for Hocker’s coach, Ben Thomas, for 10 years and trained with Hocker. He said he wasn’t at all surprised by the result.

“If Cole is there and he has something left in the last 150 meters, he is dangerous,” he said. “Anyone who has seen what he has done in the U.S., the national competition, would not be surprised.”

And yet, how could you not be?

This was the race all the running nerds had on their Olympic schedules, but not because of Hocker. In a sport where respect and civility are generally the order of the day, at least in public, Ingebrigsten and Kerr resorted to trash talk.

There was a certain Scandinavian charm to Ingebrigtsen when he arrived on the scene five years ago, a middle-distance champion from a country where Olympic medals are won on skis rather than spikes. He was the youngest of three brothers who ran.

Eldest brother Henrik finished fifth in the 1500 meters at the 2012 Olympics. Middle brother Filip won the bronze medal in the 1500 meters at the 2017 World Championships. Their father, Gjert, kept them on a tight leash during training and warned girlfriends, which worked until it didn’t anymore.

The family allowed Norwegian television cameras to follow them for a documentary that focused on their rather monastic existence. “Team Ingebrigtsen” became a huge hit and made the brothers famous, especially Jakob, whose profile skyrocketed when he won the gold medal in the 1500 meters at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Imagine “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” but with Norwegian distance runners, and you get the idea.

Ingebrigsten would also win gold in the 5,000 metres at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships. But somewhere along the way his charm began to wear thin, especially in the northern region of Great Britain, Scotland to be precise, with members of the Edinburgh Athletic Club.

Somewhere along the way, however, Ingebrigtsen’s self-assured charm turned into something bordering on an imperious disdain for competition. He did not do so, not even when he began losing matches to the aforementioned members of the Edinburgh Athletics Club.

Ingebrigtsen has proven to be an excellent runner, but is a bit clumsy in both victory and defeat, especially the latter. Perhaps his words are lost in translation, but in May 2022, when asked if he was disappointed that the competition did not push him, he said: “You can’t be disappointed when people are not better.”

That didn’t go down well, and Jake Wightman made him eat his words two months later when he walked away from Ingebrigtsen in the 1500-meter final at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon. Ingebrigtsen quickly began to say that he wasn’t 100 percent. Wightman was “a lesser athlete.”

Last year, Kerr, 26, began to outdo fellow Scot and former collegiate star at the University of New Mexico, Ingebrigtsen. He defeated him at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, where the Norwegian again claimed he was not at his best, and this year at the Prefontaine Classic. He called Kerr “the next guy,” the rider who can win when he is not fully fit.

On Tuesday evening, he made no such claims, at least not in English.

When asked if he regretted his decision to take charge, he answered yes and no.

“It’s obviously a tactical mistake that I can’t slow down my pace in the first 800 meters,” he said. “Just a little bit too fast.”

He said that with 650 meters to go, he could feel Kerr and the others picking up the pace, testing how much he had left. He said he tried to respond, but ran out of fuel — 1,500 meters was “just 100 meters too much.”

“I ruined it for myself by going way too hard,” he said.

Not so for Hocker, who is just 23 and part of a trio of young American milers who ran one of the best distance races in the country’s Olympic history. Nuguse, the 25-year-old son of Ethiopian immigrants who was born in Kentucky and went to Notre Dame, was third, and Hobbs Kessler, a 21-year-old from Ann Arbor, was fifth.

Kessler described Ingebrigtsen as the epitome of fitness. “It shows how hard it is to run at the front,” he said.

Wasn’t that the truth on Tuesday night, especially with an angry Scot and two Americans looking to impress in the chase?

“Both Cole and I knew that on the right day we could win,” Nuguse said. “A really cool moment.”

For him and for Hocker.

“That’s an incredible feeling,” Hocker said. “I felt like I was being carried through the stadium and God. My body was just doing it for me. My mind was completely there and I saw that finish line.”

Required reading

(Photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)