No American has held the 1,500-meter world record since 1983. Cathedral graduate Cole Hocker, who just won a gold medal in Paris, is looking forward to his next challenge.
Cole Hocker’s former HS track and field coach reacts to gold medal win
On Tuesday, August 6, 2024, Indiana residents gathered at Cathedral High School to support graduate Cole Hocker as he won the men’s 1500 meter race at the Olympics.
INDIANAPOLIS – He has the Olympic gold medal. And the world record?
Cole Hocker’s summer is far from over.
The miler from Indianapolis must complete at least two, maybe even three races on the Diamond League athletics track.
The first is on Thursday in Lausanne, Switzerland (2 p.m., Peacock).
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It’s a rematch against Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who led almost every step of the 1,500 meters at the Paris Olympics until he was overtaken by all three medalists. Ingebrigtsen, the 2021 Olympic 1,500 meter champion, later claimed his second gold medal by winning the 5,000 meters in Paris.
The Lausanne entry list includes six other participants in the Olympic final, including Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot, the 2021 silver medalist.
The competition record of 3:28.72 was set by Ingebrigtsen last year. At the Stade de France, Hocker set an Olympic record of 3:27.65, improving his time by three seconds and placing him seventh on the all-time list.
“I thought 3:30 was a league of its own. And now I know I can run under 3:30; 3:26 is the world record,” Hocker said the day after the US Olympic qualifying heats. “That’s a league above.”
“I can’t limit myself. That’s how I imagined it.”
A world record may be hampered by Lausanne’s altitude of 529 metres and the associated thinner air.
Ingebrigtsen’s meet record is almost three seconds slower than the world record of 3:26.00 set by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj in Rome in 1998, which he held longer than anyone else in history. (For comparison, the time corresponds to a mile of 3:42.48. El Guerrouj set the mile world record of 3:43.13 in Rome in 1999.)
No American has held the world record since South African-born Sydney Maree, who set the 1,500-meter world record in 1983 with a time of 3:31.24.
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The Cathedral graduate is a serious medal contender in the 1,500 meters after setting a record in the Olympic qualifying heats this year.
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Perhaps there will be better chances on September 5 in Zurich if Ingebrigtsen also competes alongside all three medal winners – Hocker, the Briton Josh Kerr and Yared Nuguse. In Zurich in 1998, El Guerrouj ran the fourth best time of all time with 3:26.45, four weeks after his world record.
Nowadays, record attempts are carried out with pacemakers and wave lights. Ingebrigtsen ran the 1,500 m in Monaco on July 12th in 3:26.73, the fastest time since 2015.
Cole Hocker runs his own territory. So it’s no surprise that he finds balance in music.
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Hocker, Kerr, Nuguse, Ingebrigtsen … each of the four is capable of breaking a world record.
“To make this era of the 1,500-meter run the best era of the 1,500-meter run, we have to break that world record,” Kerr said. “We’re getting closer…”
“That will definitely happen during this time.”
Hocker has been in demand since the Olympics, appearing on the “Today Show,” ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and the “Superfly” podcast co-hosted by Dana Carvey and David Spade. He has been featured in Sunday sermons by a priest in Guilford, Indiana, and a pastor at Traders Point Christian Church in Whitestown.
On the morning of the Olympic final, Hocker had 52,216 followers on Instagram. The next day, he added 25,301, and his total now exceeds 112,000. Hocker’s gold medal earned him nearly $300,000: an estimated $200,000 from a Nike bonus, $50,000 from World Athletics and $37,500 from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
A few days after his run to gold, he left Paris and travelled to Lucerne, Switzerland, to prepare for the end-of-season races. Curiously, he has won at the Olympics but has never won a Diamond League race.
When Hocker runs the Diamond League final, the 1,500 meters will take place on September 13 in Brussels, Belgium.
More: Yes, those are Olympic gold and silver medals in the hallways of Carmel High.
Contact IndyStar correspondent David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
