U.S. Champion Has Matured Into A Medal Contender In One Of The Games' Most Hotly Contested Events

By David Woods for DyeStat

John Nepolitan photo

PARIS – “Without Limits” is a 1998 film about Steve Prefontaine. It is no coincidence Cole Hocker once had a black-and-white photo of Pre hanging outside his bedroom at his parents’ Indianapolis home. Both runners represented the University of Oregon.

Similarities largely end there. Yet if there is one thing Hocker has discovered, there are indeed no limits.

It is easy to forget he was a 4:08 miler in high school, and 20 months later a 3:50 miler. During the pandemic, he ran on pavements, paths and tracks in Indiana, Colorado, Montana, Arkansas and Oregon. For someone who ran to a national title as a 9-year-old, he was still a new creation.

“If I showed myself anything, you can’t set these limitations,” he said. “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.”

The 23-year-old has emerged as medal contender in the 1,500 meters at the Paris Olympics, scheduled for Stade de France in Saint-Denis. First round, semifinals and final are Friday, Sunday, and Aug. 6, respectively.

He recently elaborated on past, present and future from the backyard patio of an Airbnb in the South Hills neighborhood of Eugene, Ore. The previous day, he had finished the Olympic Trials by placing seventh in the 5,000 meters.

He was the first since Jim Ryun (1968 and 1972) to win successive 1,500s at the Trials, setting a meet record of 3:30.59. Hocker was sixth at the 2021 Olympics.

The 1,500 is framed as a rematch of the 2023 World Championships at Budapest, Hungary, where Jakob Ingebrigtsen was overtaken by Josh Kerr . . . just as the Norwegian was overtaken by another British runner, Jake Wightman, in 2022.

Hocker has an 0-6 career record against both Kerr and Ingebrigtsen. On the other hand, since winning the Olympic Trials in 2021, he had been 0-7 vs. Yared Nuguse . . . until beating Nuguse at the Trials.

In 2021, a 20-year-old Hocker was the youngest to represent the United States in an Olympic 1,500 since Marty Liquori, 19, in 1968.

Paradoxically, the pandemic propelled 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.”

He was recruited to Oregon by Ben Thomas, who gently increased the miles for someone not logging as many as many peers. Indeed, Hocker arrived in college with the intention of staying five years – and 2024 would have been his fifth year.

“Most people don’t get the opportunity to go to the global stage until around 23, 24,” he said. “So I feel like I have a leg up right there.”

Nature and nurture influenced him.

His father, Kyle, is a runner who completed a 50-mile race on his 50th birthday. The father was a volunteer coach who never missed his son’s workouts from third grade through high school.

Not that the runner was destined to be a runner. His father thought his son might be a boxer. Or a speedskater. The kid tried soccer, flag football . . . and was a terror on the hardcourt, stealing the basketball and ruining the game for the other boys.

“I knew he had an unusual skill set,” Kyle Hocker said. “We just didn’t know what to do with it.”

Former miler Kyle Merber, director of athletes and racing for the new Grand Slam Track League, has characterized Hocker as a five-tool miler: runs comfortably in a pack, winds it up from the front, raw top-end speed, strong, changes pace effortlessly.

Hocker’s Indianapolis running routes included from his home on Geist Reservoir and around Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park. He would cover those same routes for nearly six months during the pandemic.

He has credited his Cathedral High School coach, Jim Nohl, with aiding his progression by disallowing high mileage. Thomas recruited Hocker after witnessing him run a 4:05.01 anchor 1,600 meters in a distance medley relay at the end of junior year.

Hocker continued to train under Thomas after the latter was ousted at Oregon, and the runner followed the coach when Thomas returned to Virginia Tech.

Hocker moved in November to Blacksburg, Va., 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 said. Just the way he likes it. Days can be “pretty boring,” he said. Just the way he likes it.

“We’re in our bubble,” Hocker said.

He fills hours in between runs by mixing musical beats, something he has done since high school.

He and former Ducks teammate Cooper Teare train there on crushed gravel, dirt trails and a hilly grass cross country course. They have also traveled to Provo, Utah, to train at the 4,549-foot altitude.

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 Alter-G. Moreover, the coach does not get “ramped up,” Hocker said.

“And I think that helps me. That’s how I want to view it. I want to go about it like it’s another day. Because it is just another day.”

There is no denying the Olympics are not another day, or another track meet. On the other hand, compared to Tokyo, Paris features another Hocker.

He is racing to make up lost time.

Unlike the build-up to 2024, he endured injuries in the previous two years.

In 2022, he won national indoor titles in the 1,500 and 3,000, continuing momentum from the previous year. But a stress reaction in his foot prevented him from running for two weeks ahead of outdoor nationals, a selection meet for the World Championships.

 He cross-trained for two weeks but was eliminated in the heats. After a breakout year, it was a career low.

“It was in Eugene. I lived in Eugene,” he said. “It was my first year with Nike. At the Olympics, I was not signed to Nike yet. This was my first global team to make in Nike. It was a pride thing. I wanted to prove to them that they made the right decision.

“Then it was a blow, kind of worst-case scenario.”

The 2023 season was in peril, too.

After what Hocker said was good fall of workouts, he developed soreness in his Achilles tendon and soleus. Pain lingered for two months, confining him to cross-training. He was not back on the ground to run until April 1.

“It was a tight window,” he said. “It was nerve-wracking.”

In a June 4 race at Portland, Ore., he was second in a 1,500 in 3:34.13, dipping under the 3:34.20 standard for World Championships. So when he finished third at nationals behind Nuguse and Joe Waskom, he secured passage to Budapest.

At those Worlds, Hocker finished seventh, one spot from where he was in Tokyo, but closer to a bronze medal. It was another season saved, said.

This year, he had more months to prepare as a 5,000-meter runner, and results reflect that. He won his first global medal, a silver in March’s World Indoor Championships at Glasgow, Scotland, where he was overtaken by New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish.

He thought he could make the Olympic team in the 5,000, too. It was a fifth race over 10 days, and he conceded he was spent. Two 5,000s there contributed to the build-up to the Paris 1,500, he countered.

Hocker had lowered his 5,000 PB to 12:58.82 on May 17 at Los Angeles, finishing 11th in an international field.

“In 2021, I could not have run a sub-13-minute 5K. So I got my drawers blown off in the Olympic final,” he said. “I was holding on for dear life. And now I’m accelerating off of 3:32 pace.

“And I think that comes from the 5K and not the 800.”

After each Trials round of the 1,500, he said, he was surprised to feel as he did. His 3:34 first round felt like 3:37. In the final, he “pretty much ran a perfect race,” he said, even if he was not mindful of the time.

He crushed the Trials record, towing seven others under the previous best. His last 800 was 1:49.44. He rushed to the front with more than 200 meters left to solidify a spot in the top three.

“I wasn’t certain at that point that I could hold on for the win. Just kept going,” Hocker said.

He did keep going. In August 2024, he has the tools, the fitness, the health  . . .  if not the resume of Kerr or Ingebrigtsen.

Having interviewed Hocker over the past 12 months in Budapest, New York, Albuquerque, Glasgow and Eugene, his stance has never changed:

He can win an Olympic medal, and he is going for gold.

“If I stay healthy, I don’t think anyone can beat me. Definitely not in America,” he said. “That’s what I did this year, just stayed healthy, at all costs.”

It was a cost/benefit analysis growing out of a pandemic. His CBA will be tested in an Olympic stadium.

Contact David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.