If he were anyone else, projecting a 1,500-meter world championship would be, well, preposterous. After all, he has not won a mile or 1,500-meter final in 13 months, and his best time this year ranks 18th in the world.
This is Cole Hocker, though.
As his Cathedral High School coach, Jim Nohl, once said: “He’s a breed apart.”
Hocker, 24, became a Hoosier legend on Aug. 6, 2024. To be Olympic champion in the 1,500 meters is to add one’s name to greats going back a century: Paavo Nurmi, Herb Elliott, Peter Snell, Kip Keino, John Walker, Sebastian Coe, Hicham El Guerrouj.
Hocker won the gold medal at Paris, setting an Olympic record of 3 minutes 27.65 seconds (equivalent to a 3:44.27 mile, or a second off the world record).
He was a 21-to-1 long shot, with a collective 0-14 record against co-favorites Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway and Josh Kerr of Great Britain. Hocker beat both in what was one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history.
“I knew I was a medal contender, and I knew that if I get it right, it would be a gold medal,” he said afterward. “I’ve been saying that.”
So what is he saying now?
That he is going to Tokyo for the World Championships – the 1,500 first round is Sept. 14 — with more confidence than he had before Paris.
So what if he is 0-8 in 1,500-mile races since Paris? He has shown he can lose lesser races and win the big one, as Snell, a New Zealander, did in the 1960s.
He has learned the lesson from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2:
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
“There was a lot of noise all year,” Hocker said. “I guess that’s what happens when you’re the defending Olympic champion. I try my best to embrace it. It does get hard. There’s a lot of naysayers.
“I can walk away from this meet knowing that none of that noise matters.”
The meet was August’s USA Championships at Eugene, Oregon, where he made the world team at both 1,500 and 5,000 meters.
Needing top three, he was third in the 1,500. Afterward he explained that was more concerned about making the team than about victory.
The next day, he surprisingly won the 5,000. He controlled the race by leading at a slow pace — as Matt Centrowitz did at the 2016 Rio Olympics — and rode the rail, as he did at Paris. Hocker covered the last 100 meters in 12.63 seconds — more like a sprinter than a distance runner — and climbed from seventh to first.
“I was smiling to myself, thinking like, ‘They’re going to let me do this,’ “ Hocker said. “So let’s do it.”
Finding more gears, late in the race
Nature and nurture have made him who he has become.
He has always been fast and his training sophisticated.
His father, Kyle, once took him to an Indianapolis facility, Acceleration Indiana. Hocker, a middle-schooler, was placed on a treadmill, where he was to run at a speed exceeding 20 mph for a few seconds.
He did.
So if you didn’t know where those closing bursts come from, well, now you do.
“He seems to be able to find more gears, even late in the race,” said his agent, Ray Flynn, a former 3:49 miler for Ireland.
Young Hocker 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 said.
In a 2010 cross-country national race at Lexington, Kentucky, Hocker 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.
Hocker trains in Blacksburg, Virginia, under Ben Thomas, who was his coach at the University of Oregon. The runner moved to the college town situated between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, near the Appalachian Trail.
He bought a house he had been renting. It is a quiet community. He fills hours in between runs by mixing musical beats, something he has done since high school.
“We’re in our bubble,” Hocker said.
On Instagram, he posts videos of himself biking almost as much as running. He uses a special treadmill to enhance speed, as he did as an adolescent.
Hocker is “as fit as I’ve ever seen him,” Flynn said.
The only change in Hocker’s preparation from a year ago was a commitment to the 5,000.
That was manifested Feb. 8, when he ran under the world indoor record in the 3,000 meters at New York. On that day, Grant Fisher, winner of two Olympic bronze medals, set a world record to beat him. In the 5,000 at Eugene, Hocker beat Fisher.
“Cole is the defending Olympic champion in the 1,500. He’s a tough guy to beat in the last 100,” Fisher said.
On his bathroom mirror: “3:56”
Over hundreds of miles of training, Hocker never sacrificed speed.
His father was so involved 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 junior elite camps and was a University of Florida coach who mentored Mike Holloway, builder of a college track dynasty. Hocker’s father sometimes called Knudson for advice.
The Cathedral coach dove into the data. Hocker has credited Nohl, who retired in February 2020, 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-minute mile 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 2019, but, well, 2024.
As an Oregon freshman, in February 2020, an 18-year-old Hocker became the youngest Hoosier ever to run a sub-4-minute 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 said. “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 run along Geist Reservoir and at Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park. After solo workouts for about three 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 Feb. 12, 2021. Cooper Teare (3:50.39) and Hocker (3:50.55) both ran under Robert Cheserek’s collegiate indoor mile record. Hocker, then 19, became the youngest to run a sub-3:51 indoor mile. The only other American 19-year-old approaching that was Jim Ryun, who set a world record of 3:51.3 in 1966.
In 20 months, a 4:08 high school miler was a 3:50 miler.
Back to Tokyo, aiming for a gold
Just two years out of Cathedral, Hocker won three NCAA titles and was one of three finalists for The Bowerman, the track version of college football’s Heisman Trophy.
The 20-year-old won the 1,500 at the Olympic Trials, memorably placing his finger over his lips at the finish as if to silence skeptics.
At the Tokyo Olympics, he was sixth in 3:31.40, under the Olympic record.
He returns to Tokyo not as a curiosity, but as a target. And with a target: gold (again).
The 2021 race was held inside a mostly empty stadium. This time, Japan National Stadium should feature a capacity crowd of 67,000, plus a global TV audience.
“I’m almost a completely different athlete than I was back then,” Hocker said. “It’s cool to see it come full circle.”
He was honored in the Circle City on Sept. 30, 2024, on Cole Hocker Day, returning for a ceremony at Lugar Plaza downtown. No Indiana runner in 120 years had won an Olympic medal at a distance longer than 400 meters. In St. Louis in 1904, Muncie’s Jim Lightbody won golds in the 800, 1,500 and steeplechase.
‘I don’t think a lot of people had me winning’
Running at the world level can resemble mountain climbing. It is rewarding at the top, but one slip-up can ruin it all.
Hocker has continued his ascent because he has continued to stay healthy. He said his lone concern was Achilles soreness back in April. After four days of ice treatment, he said, he was OK again.
“That was a dodged bullet,” he said. “Other than that, it’s been really consistent training. Everybody says that, but it is the biggest factor.”
He has endured such setbacks.
In 2022, a stress reaction in his foot prevented him from running for two weeks ahead of the USA Championships. He failed to make the team for a World Championships held a few blocks from his house in Eugene.
His 2023 season, too, was imperiled by injury. Because of that same Achilles soreness, he could not run on the ground until April 1 but did end up making the world team.
This season began unconventionally because he was in the new Grand Slam Track circuit, requiring him to run 800- and 1,500-meter races in Jamaica, Miami and Philadelphia. He was 0-6 in those, although he was less than a tenth of a second behind Kerr in a 1,500 at Philadelphia on May 31.
At the nationals, Hocker was third in 3:30.37 behind Jonah Koech (3:30.17) and 22-year-old Ethan Strand (3:30.25). Hocker made a tactical mistake, explaining he waited too long to run toward the front.
“In a weird way — obviously, I got third today — that was the easiest race I’ve run all season,” he said. “It comes down to that last 100 meters.”
It came down to the last 100 meters of the 5,000, too. Yet the pre-race chatter and mind-set were entirely different. No pressure at the longer distance.
“I don’t think a lot of people had me winning, definitely. I’m not even sure that many people had me making that team,” Hocker said. “It’s nice to go back to the underdog, in a way, in that race. Obviously, all eyes are going to be on me, regardless of the race, at this point.”
Hocker won in 13:26.45, pumping his fist and shouting as he crossed the finish tape.
He said he was motivated to make the world team at 1,500 and 5,000 meters because all the great milers double, from Coe to El Guerrouj to Ingebrigsten. Hocker will be the first American to run the 1,500 and 5,000 at a World Championships since Bernard Lagat in 2009. Lagat won 1,500 bronze and 5,000 silver that year, and two golds in 2007.
A breed apart
Forecast for the 1,500 at this World Championships is wildly indeterminate.
Ingebrigtsen, the 2021 Olympic champion, is coming off an injury and hasn’t raced since winning a world indoor gold medal March 23. He often leads championship races at fast paces.
“It’s definitely a new era,” Hocker said. “It could be a little bit different this year.”
Notre Dame’s Yared Nuguse, the 2024 bronze medalist, did not make the U.S. team. The two Americans who beat Hocker, Koech and Strand, are untested on global stages.
The favorite is 20-year-old Dutch phenom Niels Laros, who was sixth at Paris last year. He has manifested Hocker-like finishes.
Laros has won his past six races, including the two biggest of the year: a 3:45.94 mile at Eugene on July 5 (beating Hocker by 1.5 seconds) and the Diamond League final in 3:29.20 at Zurich on Aug. 28.
Then there are Kerr, the Olympic silver medalist; Addezine Habz, a Frenchman who has the world’s best time, 3:27.49, and two other prodigies, Phanuel Koech, 18, of Kenya, and Hakon Moe Berg, 19, of Norway.
On the other hand . . .
Hocker said this season has been “pretty much like clockwork,” compared to previous ones.
“It’s one thing to say trust the process,” he said. “Then it’s another thing to have proof of that. And obviously, last year was all the proof that I needed that this training works and we’re doing it right.”
One source told Mirror Indy that Hocker finished a recent workout by running 400 meters in 49.9. Sprinter stuff again.
Seven years ago at this time, Hocker was getting ready for a senior season of high school cross-country. Now he could make history in the world’s oldest sport. No reigning Olympic champion has won the 1,500 at the subsequent World Championships.
“It’s going to take something really special to beat him,” Flynn said.
A breed apart.
David Woods is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can contact him at dwoods1411@gmail.com or follow him on X @DavidWoods007.
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