Before the men’s Olympic 1500 meters final, British middle-distance runner Josh Kerr was the clear favorite, followed by his big rival in the race, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the superstar from Norway, who started at a world-record pace and led much of the race.
None of them, including the fans, saw American middle-distance runner Cole Hocker coming.
Naturally, the 23-year-old turned the men’s 1500-meter final on its head—creating one of the biggest upsets so far on the track at Stade de France—when he emerged victorious against the heavily favored athletes in a final mad dash that earned him the gold medal.
“I’m still looking for words to describe that moment,” Hocker said of his win, in which he beat his own personal best time by roughly three seconds. “I felt the moment, I felt the magnitude of it.”
NBC commentator Kara Goucher noted during the broadcast, “I have never seen a race of the 1500 go off that fast. And everyone knows they have to just go with it.”
Going into the race, there had been 20 instances of athletes running a sub-3:28 1500m—nine of those were from Morocco’s world-record holder Hicham El Guerrouj. This final was the first instance of three men running 3:27 in the same race, not including Ingebrigtsen, the only one who had previously broken the 3:28 barrier.
After the starting shot sounded, Ingebrigtsen quickly took the lead with a shockingly fast pace—one that set him on the path to a new world record and forced the other runners to adjust their plans in real-time.
But just because Hocker didn’t establish himself at the front of the pack, he wasn’t one to be counted out. “If Cole Hocker can stay in this,” Goucher said after the first lap, “get around his American teammates, he could spoil the fun. His finish is better than everyone else’s, but he needs to get in better position.”
“I got beaten by the better man on the day,” Kerr said after the match. “That was a heck of a race.”
Ingebrigtsen said he sabotaged his own performance by beginning the final too quickly.
“I opened with a 54-second lap,” he said. “That wasn’t the plan at all. It was at least two seconds too fast. I was thinking about slowing down, but the next lap was almost the same speed. I ruined it for myself by going way too hard. I ruined the race for myself.”
The 1500m has seen eight different medalists at the last three World Championships (in 2019, 2022, and 2023), with Kerr the only athlete to medal in both the Olympics in Tokyo and Paris, improving on his bronze from three years ago. Of the 13 men who made the final in Tokyo, only four reached it in Paris: Ingebrigtsen, Kerr, Timothy Cheruiyot, and Hocker.