SAINT-DENIS, France – Cole Hocker said he was running on instinct. He once won a national cross-country race as a 9-year-old, so he must have been made for the moment.
Not that he, or any of the 11 other milers, could hear a thing. It was all feel. The sound of 77,000 spectators inside Stade de France was deafening Tuesday night, and unlike Sunday’s 100 meters, it was constant clamor for nearly four minutes.
One of the most anticipated 1,500-meter races in the history of the Olympic Games ended up as one of biggest upsets. Hocker went off as 21-to-1 longshot. He was one Seabiscuit taking on two War Admirals.
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Hocker, who grew up running around Geist Reservoir and later lowered his mile time by 18 seconds in 20 months, delivered the shocker.
As protagonists Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr eyed each other, they lost sight of Hocker. The 23-year-old from Indianapolis had to drop back when he couldn’t get through on the rail, tried again, found a lane, bolted to the front and raised his arms triumphantly at the finish.
Afterward, Hocker pumped his fist, rang the ceremonial "Paris 2024" bell that will move into the rebuilt Notre Dame cathedral, and draped himself in an American flag resembling a Superman cape.
His time of 3:27.65 was an Olympic record, American record, Hoosier history. It was equivalent to a 3:44.3 mile, or 24 seconds faster than when he was winning Indiana state titles.
It was Hoosier hysteria at the Cathedral High School watch party, and it had nothing to do with hoops.
“I just felt like I was getting carried by the stadium and God,” Hocker said. “My body just kind of did it for me. My mind was all there, and I saw that finish line.
“Winning gold was my goal this entire year. I wrote that down and I repeated it to myself, even if I didn’t believe it. My performances showed me that I was capable of running 3:27, whatever it took. I knew I was a medal contender, and I knew that if I get it right, it would be a gold medal. I’ve been saying that.”
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Kerr was second in 3:27.79, a British record — a meaningful achievement when predecessors include the likes of Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Mo Farah.
Before the race, Kerr said to expect “one of the most vicious, hardest 1,500 meters that the sport has seen in a very long time.” He was prescient.
Notre Dame graduate Yared Nuguse also passed Ingebrigtsen, taking bronze in 3:27.80, just .01 from a USA 1-2.
Ingebrigtsen, the defending gold medalist, was fourth in 3:28.24, or faster than his Olympic record. He was overtaken at each of the past two World Championships, last year by Kerr, and it happened at the Olympics, too.
“I opened with a 54-second lap. That wasn’t the plan at all,” the 23-year-old Norwegian said. “It was at least two seconds too fast.
"I was thinking about slowing down, but the next lap was almost the same speed. I ruined it for myself by going way too hard.”
The medaliists climbed to Nos. 7, 8 and 9 on the all-time world list.
Repeating at Los Angeles 2028 will be challenging. Consider that in fifth and sixth were Hobbs Kessler, 20, of Ann Arbor, Mich., in 3:29.45 and Niels Laros, 19, of the Netherlands in 3:29.54.
It is a new era in the metric mile.
In 3 ½ minutes, Hocker instantly became one of Indiana’s top Olympians, joining the likes of Ray Ewry, Lee Calhoun, Oscar Robertson, Greg Bell, Mike Troy, David Boudia, Lilly King.
To be an Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 is to add one’s name to greats going back a century: Paavo Nurmi, Herb Elliott, Peter Snell, Kip Keino, John Walker, Coe, Noureddine Morceli, Hicham El Guerrouj.
On the podium, Hocker received his gold medal from Coe, the only two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500 and now president of World Athletics.
Seven of the 12 finalists had won a collective 15 global medals, five of them by Ingebrigtsen. All three medalists from Tokyo 2021 were in it: Ingebrigtsen, Timothy Cheruiyot and Kerr. Six men went under the previous record in that race, including Hocker.
Before this race, Hocker had a career record of 0-7 vs. both Ingebrigtsen and Kerr. All of the pre-race hype, especially by NBC, cast the race as Ingebrigtsen vs. Kerr.
“The headlines made sense and speaking personally, it can be nice to fly under the radar as much as I can in the Olympics,” Hocker said. “Most people in the race knew I was a competitor, but it was another thing not to have all that noise. So I feel like I took advantage of it.”
Hocker was seventh with 700 meters left but still within seventh-tenths of Ingebrigsten. Notably, each of the Hoosier’s last five 100-meter splits was faster or as fast as the previous: 13.9 seconds, 13.7, 13.3, 13.3, 13.0.
It was as if he were running downhill.
He tried to slip past Ingebrigsten once on the inside, was crowded and backed off, but found room when Ingebrigsten drifted toward Kerr’s left shoulder.
“I knew what I had left and I kind of knew I was going to get a medal. 'I’m going to be an Olympic medalist,'" Hocker said. "It was, ‘Let’s get silver’, then ‘Let’s get gold’,” he said.
“And with 10 meters to go I felt like I knew I had gold. Insane.
“I feel like I’ve lived that scenario a lot of times in real life, racing people and trying to kick people down and this time it just happened to be the Olympic final. I’m still trying to figure out how to comprehend that."
Nature and nurture contributed to Hocker’s rise.
His father, Kyle, is a runner who completed a 50-mile race on his 50th birthday. The father has been a volunteer coach, not missing his son’s workouts from third grade through high school.
Yet Cole was not necessarily destined to be a runner. His father thought his son might be a boxer. Or a speedskater. The kid tried soccer and flag football . . . and was a terror on the hardcourt, stealing the basketball and ruining the game for the other boys.
“I knew he had an unusual skill set,” Kyle Hocker said. “We just didn’t know what to do with it.”
He attended Horizon Christian School and, later, Fall Creek Valley Middle School. Running routes included to Horizon Christian from his home on Geist Reservoir, and around Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park.
He would cover those same routes for nearly six months during the pandemic, returning home from the University of Oregon.
In eighth grade, he ran a 4:36 mile. It “was definitely a turning point,” he said.
Hocker has credited former Cathedral coach Jim Nohl, who retired in February 2020, with keeping him healthy by limiting mileage.
At the end of his junior year, in a national meet at Greensboro, N.C., Hocker ran a 4:05.01 anchor 1,600 meters for Cathedral’s distance medley relay. Oregon coach Ben Thomas noticed and began recruiting him.
As a senior, Hocker won a state title in cross-country, then the Foot Locker nationals at San Diego. In track, he won state in the 1,600 (in 4:07.00) and 800, a double not done in Indiana since 2011.
He ran his first sub-4-minute mile in February 2020 before the pandemic shut down college track. A year later, he was down to 3:50, and he ran to three NCAA titles.
In 2021, a 20-year-old Hocker was the youngest to represent the United States in an Olympic 1,500 since Marty Liquori, 19, in 1968.
Paradoxically, the pandemic propelled Hocker’s career.
“I know it negatively affected a lot of people. But it kind of worked for me,” he said. “It pushed the Olympics back another year, where I would not have made it in 2020.”
An injury knocked him out of a home-track World Championships at Eugene, Ore., in 2022, and he returned from another injury to finish seventh at worlds in 2023.
He began buildup to this season by relocating to Blacksburg, Va., following Thomas, who became a Virginia Tech coach. Hocker stayed healthy, and he won his first global medal by taking silver at March’s indoor worlds.
Hocker became the sixth American since 1920 to medal in the 1,500. The others: Glenn Cunningham, silver, 1936; Bob McMillen, silver, 1952; Jim Ryun, silver, 1968; Leo Manzano, silver, 2012; Matthew Centrowitz, gold, 2016.
The United States had not put two men on the 1,500 podium since 1912.
No Indiana runner in 120 years had won an Olympic medal at a distance longer than 400 meters. In St. Louis in 1904, Muncie’s Jim Lightbody won golds in the 800, 1,500 and steeplechase, and Lacey Hearn of Portland, Ind., took the bronze in the 1,500.
