AS I WATCHED THE DL Final ring down the curtain on a blockbuster of a track season the other week, I couldn’t help but ponder the rousing peak of good health in which men’s 1500 racing found itself this summer.
Heck, I think of it as miling, whether the distance raced is metric or Imperial — and no, I’m not about to fulminate, in this month’s column anyway, about the awkward compromise that is the high school 1600, neither fish nor fowl.
Rather, consider the season just passed. An Olympic Record 1500 at the Games, thoroughly unpredictable as it played out, spectacular to watch and with a U.S. gold medalist triumphant in the person of Cole Hocker. Not to mention, as I tip my jingoistic cap, the pleasure on these shores of seeing 3 Americans in the top 5 at an Olympics. The event had not seen as many as 3 U.S.Olympic finalists since ’68. And last before that in ’36. When one is the age of Hocker, Nuguse or Hobbs Kessler, those dates must sound prehistoric.
And now here on a chilly September night in Brussels, Hocker, Nuguse and Ingebrigtsen lined up yet again. Hocker met Ingebrigtsen — the Nordic savant and his gold medal predecessor — 3 times in all post-Paris and in 5 finals over the course of the year.
Bronze medalist Yared Nuguse raced the brash Norwegian in 5 finals, with 2 of those clashes after Paris. Nuguse got the W against Ingebrigtsen in Zürich.
Paris silver medalist/world champion Josh Kerr lined up in Zürich, met the trio above 3 times in ’24 and had taken their measure in a peach of a Pre Classic mile in May.
Heavens to Coe & Ovett, where’s all the ducking and dodging? What’s become of that feature-more-than-bug seen in earlier golden eras of miling? Refreshingly, shockingly absent. Hmmm, the Diamond League can and sometimes does work as intended.
Then as I worked the thinking cap about all this, smile on my face, correspondent David Woods e-mailed. What was on his mind? Let him tell you.
This is esoteric, even for stat geeks, but I calculated average of Cole Hocker’s five fastest 1500s of the year. 3:29.90. I figured he is the first American to average sub-3:30 for five 1500s.
Then I did the same for Yared Nuguse. He was 3:29.85!
Wonder how many runners have sub-3:30 averages for five 1500s in a year? I’m sure El Guerrouj, Lagat and Ingebrigtsen have done so.
DW
Did David mention esoteric? Here I am. The answer is not many at all. Five-race sub-3:30 seasonal averages are rare. As I write, 47 men have run under 3:30 at least once since Steve Cram took the WR below the barrier (to 3:29.67) in ’85.
Noureddine Morceli was the first to a 5-mark sub-3:30 average in ’95, the sixth year of his 7-season streak as the 1500’s No. 1 World Ranker. The Algerian averaged 3:29.17*.
(*=My calculations include converted miles and in instances where the athlete recorded a 1500 time en route in that mile, I have defaulted to including only the mile time in the average. You’ve watched it, world-class milers are typically kicking at the end of a race, thus the Imperial times in these cases tend to be intrinsically superior than the en route 1500.)
After Morceli, why the miler who exceeded him by every other metric, Hicham El Guerrouj, of course, hit his first 5-mark sub-3:30 average, 3:28.86, in 1997. The next season, 1998, in which he set the still standing WR of 3:26.00, El G averaged 3:27.58 for his 5 fastest races.
Three seasons later a new name joined the club, Bernard Lagat, whose ’01 average for 5 races was 3:29.86.
El Guerrouj turned the feat again in ’02 with 3:28.08. And then a 2-decade drought until along came Ingebrigtsen, 3:29.57 in ’22. In ’23, there were two, Ingebrigtsen at 3:28.12 and Nuguse, 3:29.52.
This season is the first-ever to see three do it. In order of average time: Ingebrigtsen 3:28.24, Nuguse 3:29.29 and Hocker 3:29.90. (Note my Nuguse calculation is faster than my friend David Woods’ as I’ve applied the assumptions mentioned in parentheses above.)
Not a common trick. Sure, modern shoes and tracks are factors, significant factors. I prefer to look at it this way. Today’s milers are racing head to head, competition drives the game, and the gaggle of fast times that resulted this summer — well, they just came along with the ride. Racing, I love it!
