Cole Hocker stuns the world as he beats Josh Kerr to win Olympic gold in the men’s 1500 meters

Cole Hocker of the United States pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Olympic running on Tuesday night, beating Jakob Ingebrigtsen and beating Josh Kerr and everyone else down the stretch to win the men’s 1500 meters and turn around what has been a should have been two-way. man fight in the surprise of the Games.

With a huge kick in the final 30 meters, Hocker – born in Indianapolis and raised at the University of Oregon, the heart and guts of American distance running since the days of Steve Prefontaine – finished in an Olympic record 3:27.65, just under a quarter second ahead of Kerr, the reigning world champion.

Hocker’s teammate Yared Nuguse beat Ingebrigtsen for the bronze as the defending champion dropped to fourth after setting the pace for the first 1300 meters.

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

Ingebrigtsen, the last announced for the race, held up one index number and stared at the camera that all 80,000 fans could see on the giant video boards above the purple track. He should have held on for four on a night when he lost his third consecutive 1500 championship, including the 2022 and 2023 races at the World Track and Field Championships.

On a perfect evening for racing, the sky clear, the air still and dry and borderline cool, this would be 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 until the last corner. Ingebrigtsen, the fastest man in the field, went straight to the front and set a blistering pace, 1:51.3 for the first 800. The strategy was laced with courage and fear. He was brave enough to attempt one of the hardest things in running: win a race from the front, wire to wire.

But this move came from the fear of knowing that other runners might finish faster than him, and that his only hope was to bury Kerr and the rest of the field far enough behind him that they would run out of bounds before they would be hit. can catch him.

With 200 meters to go, he heard the crowd noise rise to a dizzying level. His head turned to the right and he saw Kerr approaching. By the time they got straight to the final, Kerr was well on his way to passing him.

WOW. 😱

A stunning surprise in the men’s 1500 meters, as the AMERICAN COLE HOCKER takes gold! #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/wlq81lbvSO

— NBC Olympic and Paralympic Games (@NBCOlympics) August 6, 2024

But so is Hocker, the former Oregon Duck who is showing the speed he has shown before, but never at this level or pace.

He was right in the middle of the pack for the last 600 meters, not too close to the leaders but not too far away either, and when it was time to go he was going fast enough for both the Olympic and American races. records in one of the Games’ signature events.

“I told myself I’m in this race too,” Hocker said. “If they let me fly under the radar, then so be it. I think that might have been 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 reason to be disappointed. But he had no idea what was happening behind him.

He looked at the scoreboard and saw Ingebrigtsen drop to fourth place. A big smile appeared on his face. He looked at Hocker and Nuguse and started clapping at them like they were old friends.

Neil Gourley, Kerr’s teammate in Great Britain, ran for Hocker’s coach, Ben Thomas, for a decade and trained with Hocker. He said he was not 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 saw what he did in the US wouldn’t be surprised.”

And yet, how could you not be?

This was the race that all the running nerds had circled on their Olympic schedule, but not because of Hocker. In a sport where respect and civility generally prevail, at least in public, Ingebrigsten and Kerr tended toward trash talk.

There was a certain Scandinavian charm about Ingebrigtsen when he burst onto the scene five years ago, a middle-distance champion from a country where people generally win Olympic medals with skis rather than running shoes. He was the youngest of three running brothers.

Eldest brother Henrik finished fifth in the 1500 meters at the 2012 Olympic Games. Middle brother Filip won the bronze medal in the 1500 at the 2017 World Championships. Their father, Gjert, kept them on a tight leash as he trained them, warning friends, which worked until it didn’t.

The family allowed Norwegian television cameras to follow them for a documentary, which highlighted 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 at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Imagine “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” but then with Norwegian distance runners and you get the idea.

Ingebrigsten would also win gold in the 5,000 at the world championships in 2022 and 2023. But somewhere along the way his charm began to fade, especially in the northern region of Britain, Scotland to be specific, with members of the Edinburgh Athletic Club.

Somewhere along the way, however, Ingebrigtsen’s confident charm turned into something bordering on an imperious disregard for the competition, none of which he backed down from, even when he began losing races to the aforementioned members of the Edinburgh Athletics Club.

Ingebrigtsen has proven to be an excellent runner, but somewhat ruthless in both victory and defeat, especially the latter. Perhaps his words are lost in translation, but when asked in May 2022 if he was disappointed that the competition wasn’t pushing him, he said, “You can’t be disappointed when people aren’t better.”

That didn’t go well, and Jake Wightman made him eat his verbiage two months later when he ran away from Ingebrigtsen in the 1500 final at the 2022 World Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon. Ingebrigtsen soon started telling people that he had not been at 100 percent. Wightman was ‘a lesser athlete’.

Last year, Kerr, 26, another Scot and former collegiate star at the University of New Mexico, started beating Ingebrigtsen.

He defeated him at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, where the Norwegian once again claimed not to have been at his best, and also at this year’s Prefontaine Classic. He has called Kerr “the next man up,” as in, the runner who can win when he’s not fully fit.

He made no such claims on Tuesday evening, at least not in English.

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

“It is of course a tactical error that I cannot lower my pace in the first 800,” he said. “Just a little too hard.”

He said that with 650 meters to go, he felt Kerr and the others picking up the pace and testing to see how much he had left. He said he tried to respond but ran out of gas – 1,500 meters had turned out to be ‘just 100 meters too much’.

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

Not for Hocker, who is only 23 years old and part of a triumvirate of young American milers who have run one of the country’s best distance races in Olympic history, with Nuguse, the 25-year-old child of Ethiopian immigrants who was born in Kentucky and visited Notre Dame, where he finished third, and Hobbs Kessler, a 21-year-old from Ann Arbor, finished fifth.

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

Wasn’t that the truth Tuesday night, especially when an angry Scot and two Americans wanted to make their mark during the chase?

“Both me and Cole knew coming in on the right day we could win,” Nuguse said. “A very cool moment.”

For him and for Hocker.

“That’s an incredible feeling,” Hocker said. “I just felt like I was being carried by the stadium and God. My body just did it for me. My thoughts were all there and I saw that finish line.

Required reading

(Photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)