The 2024 Race of the Year: Cole Hocker’s Olympic 1500m Win

One hundred and fifty-three days have passed since the men’s Olympic 1500-meter final on August 6, 2024 in the Stade de France, and I’d estimate that I’ve thought at least briefly about that race on every one of them. It is the sort of race that sticks with you.

The hype for the 2024 Olympics began before the 2023 World Championships had even concluded when Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen was asked if he would try to get revenge on the man who had vanquished him in Budapest and instead referred to Great Britain’s Josh Kerr as “just the next guy.” As the two traded words (and wins) over the next 12 months, the Olympic final became the most-anticipated 1500-meter race since the heyday of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett in the 1980s.

For students of track history, that may have offered a hint of the chaos that was to come in Paris. Because Ingebrigtsen versus Kerr played out exactly like Coe and Ovett’s first meeting on the track, the 1978 European Championships 800-meter final in Prague. Watching it back, the similarities are eerie. Coe, like Ingebrigtsen, took the race out insanely fast (49.32 through 400m for Coe, 54.82 for Ingebrigtsen). Ovett, like Kerr, sat on Coe throughout the final lap and timed his move perfectly to defeat his fading rival — but not the fast-closing upstart, Olaf Beyer then, Cole Hocker now.

“[Paris] was an interesting one because it was almost two separate races,” said Coe, the only man to win two Olympic 1500m titles, in an interview with LetsRun.com. “You had the race that Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr thought they were running, and then you had the race that the rest of the field thought that they were running. And it was always a risk.”

But Hocker took a risk too, daring to follow the leaders early despite coming to Paris with a much slower personal best of 3:30.59. Barely two months earlier, he had finished more than three seconds behind both men in the Bowerman Mile, and though Hocker knew he had grown fitter since then, he did not know precisely how fit. Could he run with the Olympic champ and the world champ in a 3:28 race? A 3:27 race? All he knew was that he was going to give himself a chance to find out.

“I told myself, don’t be soft,” Hocker said. “You’ve gotta go with it. You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life if you don’t go with it.”

Hocker’s gutsiness ensured that the men’s 1500 final in Paris will join Billy Mills’ 10,000m win in Tokyo, Dave Wottle‘s 800m triumph in Munich, and Matthew Centrowitz‘s 1500m gold in Rio as one of the greatest victories ever by an American distance runner. It is also LetsRun.com’s 2024 Race of the Year. Here are seven things that stand out about that magical night, five months later:

1) A race with universal appeal

A week after I returned from Paris, I went to a party at a friend’s house. I’m always curious which moments resonate outside of the running bubble, and I had barely unlocked the gate to the backyard before I was bombarded by my buddies’ thoughts about the Olympics. The consensus:

That Cole Hocker guy is amazing!

I have long maintained that any serious sports fan should love a great championship 800- or 1500-meter race. This year’s Olympic 1500 final proved it. I suspect many of the Americans who tuned in to watch the race were like my friends and probably knew very little about the event other what they learned from NBC’s terrific pre-race package: that Ingebrigtsen and Kerr were the two favorites, and that they did not like each other.

And really, that was enough. My friends saw the same thing everyone else did: the two favorites slugging it out and an American underdog beating them both thanks to a humongous kick in the final 100 meters. They didn’t need me to tell them they had watched a classic.

Sometimes, there’s a temptation for fans of niche sports to turn into hipsters with this sort of stuff. 

Oh you enjoyed the Olympics, did you? Well, where were you when Cole Hocker doubled up at NCAA indoors in 2021?

I don’t see it that way. I love that, for one night in August, America got to see exactly why us running junkies are so obsessed with the men’s 1500 meters. I wasn’t mad about folks hopping on the bandwagon. But it did make me appreciate all of the races that brought us to this point.

I was there in College Station, Tex., when a freshman named Yared Nuguse ran down Grant Fisher on the anchor leg of the NCAA distance medley relay. I watched from afar when Nuguse and Hocker battled it out for the NCAA 1500 title in 2021, and from the stands at Hayward Field as they made their first Olympic team two weeks later. In the moment, watching Hocker outkick Matthew Centrowitz in that race at the Olympic Trials was cool. Knowing what we know now — that it was a passing-of-the-torch moment, one Olympic champion dethroning another — it will go down as truly iconic.

It’s a special thing, to witness a talent like Hocker or Nuguse emerge, grow, push to find their limits, then train to surpass them. So, so few athletes earn the right to stand on an Olympic podium that when you watch the ones you’ve been following for years finally succeed at the highest level of the sport, you can’t help but grow nostalgic.

2) Jakob runs 3:28 from the front

Kevin Morris photo

You can criticize him (slightly) for the execution, but there is no doubting Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s guts. Ingebrigtsen knew he was up against a supremely fit rival in Josh Kerr, and he figured his best chance at beating him was to take it from the gun and force a pace so fast that no one else in the world could hang.

Think of the confidence that requires. Before Paris, no man in the history of 1500-meter running had ever run 3:28 from the front. Not without Wavelight, or a pacer, or a sacrificial lamb pulling them along. Ingebrigtsen had the audacity to try it on the sport’s greatest stage — and actually pulled it off. Ingebrigtsen’s 3:28.24 in Paris was faster than his own Olympic record of 3:28.32 from Tokyo. It was not good enough for gold — hell, not even enough for a medal. But watching Ingebrigtsen take the race out in 54.82 for the first 400 and wondering, Holy crap, is this dude actually trying to break the world record in the Olympic final? was one of the greatest thrills of the Olympics.

3) Three guys actually did run 3:27

To win gold in Paris, Ingebrigtsen would have needed to run 3:27.64, another reason why this race was so nuts. It was the first time in history three men broke 3:28 in the same race, and it happened in an Olympic final. Before this race, no American man had ever broken 3:29*. In Paris, two Americans broke 3:28.

*Bernard Lagat ran 3:27.40 as a US citizen in 2004, but was still representing Kenya at the time

4) Americans went 1-3-5 in the deepest Olympic final ever

Ingebrigtsen’s tactics and the benefits of supershoes meant that Paris was the fastest Olympic final ever, not only up front (four men under the old Olympic record), but all the way down (Neil Gourley ran 3:30 and finished 10th).  Americans Hocker, Nuguse, and Hobbs Kessler finished 1st, 3rd, and 5th. Normally, a 21-year-old American running 3:29 in an Olympic final would cause a meltdown on the LetsRun.com messageboard. But because of Hocker and Nuguse’s heroics up front, Kessler’s achievement largely flew under the radar.

Considering none of America’s Olympic trio is older than 25, it’s safe to say we are living in a golden age of American 1500m running.

“Greatest miling country in the world right now,” Kessler said after the race.

5) Hocker’s re-acceleration

During the final 20 seconds of the Olympic final, Cole Hocker did the following things:

-Accelerated and launched into his kick to try and pass Ingebrigtsen on the inside on the final turn (3:07 on the clock)
-Slammed on the brakes when Ingebrigtsen moved in to protect the rail (3:12)
-Gathered himself, accelerated, and launched his kick again in the home straight (3:17), passing Ingebrigtsen (3:21) and then Kerr (3:25)

It’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in a 1500m race. Hocker ran his final 200 in 26.2 seconds (13.0 final 100) in a 3:27 race despite starting, stopping, and restarting his kick all within the span of 10 seconds. Is there anyone else in the world that could have done that? How many guys, ever, could do something like that? When we talk about “shifting gears” at the end of the race, we’re usually only talking about one direction. Hocker showed he could shift up, down, and up again and still beat the best in the world.

6) Americans do not win Olympic distance races very often

The men’s 1500 draws from a wide net of talent. Across the last 14 Olympics, we’ve seen winners from Kenya, Algeria, and Morocco as well as Norway, New Zealand, and Spain. Since 1972, no country has won more than two gold medals in the event.

That’s just a reminder that while the US has claimed two of the last three Olympic golds in the men’s 1500 thanks to Centrowitz and Hocker, it does not happen often. The last one before that was Mel Sheppard way back in 1908. Even expanding the list to include all distance events, you’d have to go back more than a half century, to 1972 with Dave Wottle (800) and Frank Shorter (marathon), to find the last American man to win Olympic distance gold before Centro/Hocker.

7) The people who saw it coming

The Olympic final in Paris was thrilling in large part because Hocker’s win came as an enormous upset to so many fans (and the bookmakers too).

But not everyone saw it that way.

Consider Bill Walsh. While watching the LetsRun.com live show from Paris the night before the 1500-meter final, he wrote in to offer one of the greatest predictions in LetsRun.com history: “Imagine Kerr running Jakob down and Cole coming over the top at the line!”

Walsh’s prediction proved prophetic.

As did Rojo’s prediction. In the clip below he says, “I think the message board would explode [if Hocker wins].”

Indeed, Hocker’s win brought so much traffic to LetsRun.com that it briefly crashed after the race.

In the days following Hocker’s victory, it was a lot of fun to trawl through all the pre-race prediction threads on the LetsRun.com messageboard to find the true believers (as well as the doubters). A few of the highlights:

This poster started a thread in February 2024 titled “Jakob won’t medal in the 1500m at the Olympics“:

Medal Stand (3:33 p.m. EST): Just putting this up as a placeholder. He will be a sitting duck on the last lap as per usual but this year, he will finish 4th at best.

Poster “Big Red” predicted a Hocker win and even got a shoutout from The Guardian

In the “How do you think men’s 1500 tactics play out?” thread, Big Red didn’t get all the details but nailed the finish:

Big Red (12:21 p.m. EDT): Yared may ease into the lead at the start, just to keep clear of trouble. Jakob eases to the front at 300 or 500. He runs each 100 faster as race progresses. Kerr and Hocker close by. Tim in the hunt.
Jakob and Kerr get a wee gap on the last lap.
Hocker’s midnight express kick mows ’em down for the gold.
(This fan’s fantasy?)

This poster wasn’t bold enough to predict a Hocker victory but nailed his time in the final: Today Cole Hocker becomes a 3:27 man

track and field (8:31 a.m. EDT): Don’t know what place he’ll end up in (I think 3rd) but I bet he hangs with the leaders at the back of the lead pack and musters some sort of kick to finish 3:27.xx

Let’s give the final word to longtime LRC poster “coach,” who warned against hyperbole in a thread titled “2 hours until the greatest race of our lifetime” only to witness an all-time classic:

coach (1:15 p.m. EDT): Your lifetime, not mine.

coach (2:59 p.m. EDT): Happy to be wrong.

***

All LRC coverage of the 2024 Olympic 1500m final:

LRC Cole Hocker Runs 3:27.65 to Win Epic 2024 Olympic 1500m Final
LRC Analysis Jakob Ingebrigtsen didn’t run a bad race tonight, he just got beat by 3 men who were better

On the boards:

• COLE MF HOCKER!!!!!!!
• Olympics Aug 6 Evening Session Live Thread
• Slow Race – Jakob gets outkicked; Fast Race – Jakob gets outkicked
• How does a 3.30 guy outkick a 3.26 guy in a 3.27 race?
• Jakob won’t medal in the 1500m at the Olympics What a prediction!
• Hocker is the best US 1500 runner of all time
• Hocker tries to pass Jakob, gets cut off, Jakob moves slightly outside to try to move Kerr, gives Hocker room to pass for the W!
• LetsRun Crashed!! We had to turn on a queue for about one minute to “let the server breathe.”
• Kerr only lost to Hocker because Jakob cut Kerr off in the final 100m…
• Today Cole Hocker becomes a 3:27 man
• 2 hours until the greatest race of our lifetime

Cole Hocker wins the 2024 Olympic 1500m (Kevin Morris photo)