It All Started Here: Cole Hocker

The race Cole Hocker ran to win a Gold Medal at the 2024 Paris Summer Games began exactly 1,500 meters from the finish line and lasted just 3-minutes, 27.65-seconds – the fastest 1,500-meter time in Olympic history.

His journey to that glorious moment inside the Stade de France, however, was much longer, dating to his first national running competitions in elementary school, a 4:36 mile he ran as an eighth-grader, and, most notably, his time as a standout runner at Indianapolis (Indiana) Cathedral High School.

Hocker’s pedigree as a youth runner paid off instantly at Cathedral, where he won an Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) track and field sectional title in the 1,600 meters his freshman year and finished fourth in the state as a sophomore with a time of 4:13.58. He took another step forward as a junior, coming in second at the IHSAA Boys Cross Country State Tournament before improving on his sophomore track results with a 4:08.04 in the 1,600 meters that earned him second place at the state finals.

But it wasn’t until Hocker’s senior year that he really started to haul in the hardware. First, he avenged his runner-up cross country result from the year prior, clocking a five-kilometer time of 15:25.1 at the IHSAA state meet that also helped the Crusaders to a program-best second-place finish in the team competition. Then, after wrapping up his senior campaign with a pair of podium finishes on the national stage – including a victory at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in San Diego – Hocker won both the 800- and 1,600-meter track state titles the following spring, becoming the first Indiana high school athlete to do so since 2011.

With scholarship offers to run for many of the top collegiate programs in the country, Hocker chose the University of Oregon as the location for the next chapter of his career. Hocker ran for the Ducks from 2019 to 2021 but shined brightest in his final indoor and outdoor track and field seasons when he became a three-time national champion. Hocker won the mile (3:53.71) and the 3,000 meters (7:46.15) at the 2021 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships and followed that up with an outdoor national title in the 1,500 meters (3:35.35).

During his time in Eugene, Hocker also attended the 2020 United States Olympic Trials and made Team USA based on his positioning in the world rankings. He then advanced all the way to the 1,500-meter finals at the 2020 Tokyo Games, where he ran a then-personal-best 3:31.40 to place sixth.

Shortly after returning home from Tokyo, Hocker decided he would forgo his remaining collegiate eligibility and start his professional career, which began with his debut at the indoor Millrose Games in January 2022. Less than a month later at the USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, Hocker announced himself as a true contender on the pro circuit, taking the gold medal in both the 1,500 meters and the 3,000 meters with times of 3:39.09 and 7:47.50, respectively. Those results qualified him to run at the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, but Hocker opted instead to prepare for the upcoming outdoor season, which was unfortunately cut short due to injury.

His next highlight came at the 2023 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, where he took third place in the 1,500 meters to earn a trip to the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, which culminated in a seventh-place finish. He followed that with an appearance at the Prefontaine Classic, where he ran the fourth-fastest mile time ever recorded by an American – 3:48.08.

Hocker’s sensational showing at this year’s Summer Olympics proved to be the pinnacle of what was already an outstanding 2024 campaign, highlighted by his second 1,500-meter national title at the USA indoor championships and his first podium finish at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, where he took second with a 3:36.69 split.