WHEN HE WAS a boy, Cole Hocker, the Olympic 1500 gold medalist, was fast. As in sprinter fast.
His father Kyle once took him to an Indianapolis facility, Acceleration Indiana. Cole, a middle-schooler, was placed on a treadmill, where he was to run at a speed exceeding 20mph for a few seconds.
He didn’t think he could do it. He did.
That closing burst down the rail to win in Paris? The 77,000 fans at Stade de France and a global TV audience saw what his family, boyhood pals, coaches and high school rivals had witnessed before.
The kid had such quick hands, he ruined basketball games by stealing the ball. In flag football, he and two other boys ruined games, too.
“We could hardly look the other team in the eyes. We could do whatever we wanted to do because we were fast,” his father says.
If none of this makes sense because Hocker is a distance runner, well, that’s the point. He did not become an Olympic champion by doing what every other runner does.
In a ’10 cross country nationals at Lexington, Kentucky, he won the 9-year-old division by 32 seconds. The aftermath is recorded in a YouTube video in which he is asked six questions, and replies with six one-word answers. Then, as now, he let his running speak for itself.
No high mileage then. No high mileage now.
Mostly fast running.
Kyle Hocker was so involved in the training that he did not miss one of his son’s workouts from third grade through high school. The father sought to employ the innovative, albeit controversial, speed-based methods employed by the late Lyle Knudson.
Knudson once directed USATF junior elite camps and was a Florida coach who mentored Mike Holloway, builder of the Gators’ dynasty. Hocker’s father sometimes called Knudson himself for advice.
Cathedral High School coach Jim Nohl dove into the data. Hocker has credited Nohl, who retired in February ’20, with keeping him healthy by limiting mileage. Nohl estimated Hocker logged 31–37 miles a week in the fall, 27–31 in the spring
Hocker perhaps could have run a sub-4:00 in high school, but his coach did not prioritize that — even though the teen had “3:56” affixed to his bathroom mirror. Nohl was not looking at ’19, but, well, ’24.
“He’s a breed apart,” the coach once said.
Hocker came to the attention of Oregon assistant Ben Thomas because of a 4:05 anchor in a distance medley relay. As an Oregon frosh, in February ’20, an 18-year-old Hocker became the youngest Hoosier ever to run a sub-4:00 mile, 3:58.20.
The pandemic scuttled the NCAA Indoor Championships… and, paradoxically, enhanced Hocker’s career.
“I know it negatively affected a lot of people. But it kind of worked for me,” he says. “It pushed the Olympics back another year, where I would not have made it in 2020.”
When students weren’t allowed on campus, Hocker went home to Indianapolis to run along Geist Reservoir and at Fort Benjamin Harrison. After solo workouts for about 3 months — including swims in the reservoir — he joined teammates for a mini-camp in Boulder, Colorado, then returned to Eugene. When smoke from forest fires poisoned air quality, he was among runners traveling 12 hours to Ennis, Montana, where they resumed training.
If there was one date signaling Hocker’s arrival on the world scene, it was February 12, 2021, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Cooper Teare (3:50.39) and Hocker (3:50.55) both ran under Robert Cheserek’s Collegiate Indoor Record for the mile. Hocker, then 19, was the youngest to run a sub-3:51 indoor mile. The only other American 19-year-old as fast was legendary Jim Ryun, who set a World Record of 3:51.3 in ’66.
In 20 months, a 4:08 high school miler was a 3:50 miler.
After three NCAA titles, Hocker won the 1500 at the Olympic Trials, memorably placing his finger over his lips at the finish as if to silence skeptics. At 20, he was the youngest to represent the United States in an Olympic 1500 since Marty Liquori, 19, in ’68.
At Tokyo, he placed 6th in 3:31.40, under the Olympic Record when the gun fired. He was “holding on for dear life” at that pace, he conceded.
Three years later, he set an Olympic Trials Record of 3:30.59. He became the first since — there’s that name again — Ryun to win successive 1500s.
“If I showed myself anything, you can’t set these limitations,” he said the day after the OT. “Because my freshman year of college, I wouldn’t have thought I could win the Olympic Trials. I probably would have never thought I could run 3:30.
“I thought 3:30 was a league of its own. And now it’s like, I know I can run sub-3:30; 3:26 is the World Record. That’s another league up.
“I can’t limit myself there. That’s the way I thought about it.”
In ’22, a stress reaction in his foot prevented him from running for 2 weeks ahead of nationals. He failed to make the team for a World Championships to be held a few blocks from his house. After so many months of uninterrupted progress, it was bitterly disappointing.
His ’23 season, too, was imperiled by injury. Because of Achilles soreness, he could not run on the ground until April 01, but did end up making the team for the Worlds in Budapest.
Thomas lost his job at Oregon when head coach Robert Johnson was fired in June of ’22, but he continued to coach Hocker. The runner followed his coach when Thomas returned to Virginia Tech.
Hocker moved in November to Blacksburg, Virginia, a college town situated between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, near the Appalachian Trail. He bought a house he had been renting. It is quiet there, he says.
“We’re in our bubble.”
He fills hours in between runs by mixing musical beats, something he has done since high school.
Hocker and Thomas share philosophies on training and racing. The runner said he hasn’t logged an 80-mile week all season, supplementing that with biking, swimming or AlterG. Thomas takes a measured approach, as his high school coach did.
Before the Olympic final, Hocker’s career record was 0–7 vs. Josh Kerr, 0–7 vs. Jakob Ingebrigtsen. If one were a bettor, Hocker was a longshot.
Yet he did not allow his confidence to waver. Not when he was 7th at Budapest. Not when he was 4 seconds behind Ingebrigtsen and Yared Nuguse in a mile at the ’23 Prefontaine Classic. Not when he was overtaken by Geordie Beamish at March’s indoor Worlds. Not when he was 7th in the Pre mile, nearly 4 seconds behind Kerr.
Unwinding at an Airbnb in Eugene, the day after the Trials, he said:
“If I stay healthy, I don’t think anyone can beat me. Definitely not in America. That’s what I did this year, just stayed healthy, at all costs.”
The costs reaped benefits: gold medal and a time of 3:27.65, Olympic Record.
That Indianapolis treadmill might have no better chance of restraining him than Kerr or Ingebrigtsen did.