There's a nice feature on Hocker in the Philly Inquirer today prior to him competing in Philly at GST.
It talks a lot about how Hocker has never raced in Franklin Field, but he's a student of the sport and well aware of its history.
Tannenwald wrote:
“I’d say it might be number two most iconic in the U.S. behind Hayward [Field], so I’m excited to check that one off my bucket list,” he said, referring to Oregon’s famed track stadium. “I’ve watched all these races of Cheserek and all the Oregon legends running at Penn, so it’s pretty cool.”
Hocker mentioned Cheserek’s 4xMile anchor leg in 2015, an all-time moment. Cheserek took the baton having helped the Ducks win not just the previous day’s distance medley relay, but also the 2014 DMR and 4xMile. This time, he deliberately slowed down the entire field at the start of the anchor leg, then lost to Villanova in the final stretch.
"I’ve seen that a bunch of times,” Hocker said. “You can tell how important it is to win. I think, honestly, there’s a lot of parallels between Grand Slam and that, because you want to win at Penn. … You might run a fast time, but it’s all about winning, and Grand Slam is the same way.”
Hocker also talks about the Jakob v Kerr rivalry.
Tannenwald wrote:
“I don’t think I try to get along, and I don‘t try to keep the peace. I just do my thing,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of takeaways from last year on being so focused on someone else, and what can happen.”
...
“I think it was probably the most anticipated event of at least the track Olympics, [beyond] maybe the 100 meters,” Hocker said. “Obviously, there’s so much to say about their race and congratulating me, but so many people bring up this rivalry. … Whether they see me as the underdog, people are like, ‘Oh, I’m so happy to see both those guys go down. I don’t like how they talk.’ So if I can be a piece in that story, and they kind of created it, yeah, I think conversation around it is always a good thing.”
PS. If the article is behind a paywall, hit control V real quickly and you can paste it into a text file and read it.