He has gotten lucky a lot. Here he is back in 6th grade at Fall Creek Middle School getting lucky in the Conference meet and taking down a bunch of 8th graders. And then he got lucky at Foot Locker, and all those NCAA finals. And then he got lucky making all those World Championship finals. Recently he got lucky again qualifying for the US team for Worlds. I'm not sure if he will get lucky again in the WC Final, but there does seem to be a pattern here.
No. Hocker took down Centro in the trials, the Olympic Champion (Jakob) and the World Champion (Kerr) and set an Olympic Record of 3:27. Centro basically ran fartlek for a 3:50.6.
tbh, if Jakob just held the damn line like a normal runner does in that case, Hocker would've gone home with a bronze. Hocker is one of the worst tacticians of all time, His DQ today exemplifies this.
So Oregon Ducks won two of the last three Olympic 1500m in the fastest times ever for a major championship and the fastest last lap ever for a major championship and it’s luck?