Olympics-bound runner is training in Blacksburg with Virginia Tech coach

The Blacksburg Striders running club regularly assembles for a Wednesday “pub run” in the New River Valley.

Some 50 or 60 participants gathered recently on a warm afternoon in the parking lot at RunAbout Sports on South Main Street in Blacksburg to cover circuits anywhere from three to seven miles.

For Cole Hocker, it was a piece of cake.

The newly crowned U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials 1,500-meter champion enjoyed a slice of the flaky dessert while members of the local running club dutifully completed their roadwork.

Soon, very soon, the main course will be on Hocker’s menu.

And it is a challenge that could provide the ultimate icing.

The 23-year-old Indianapolis native and former NCAA champion in Oregon will soon head to Paris for the Summer Olympics, where he hopes to challenge for the rarest of prizes: a gold medal.

When he toes the starting line in a USA uniform for the first round of qualifying on Aug. 2 and, he hopes, the semifinals on Aug. 4 and the Olympic final on Aug. 6, folks in the New River Valley will pay close attention.

Because Hocker now calls Blacksburg home.

He stowed his car and his essential belongings into a POD, shipped it from Eugene, Oregon, across the country in mid-November and purchased a house in Montgomery County after he had already bought into the idea that Blacksburg would be the ideal spot for him to continue training for his lifelong goal.

Hocker moved to Virginia to be reunited with his personal mentor, Virginia Tech head track and field coach Ben Thomas.

Thomas, who was in charge of Tech’s cross-country teams and distance runners from 2001 to 2018, coached Hocker when he was an assistant at Oregon for four seasons before the Lynchburg native returned to coach Tech track and field last year.

Hocker soon followed.

Last month on his old home track at Hayward Field in Eugene, Hocker broke the U.S. Trials record in the 1,500 with a time of 3 minutes, 30.59 seconds.

Will more success follow in Paris?

“I’m going for gold,” he said.

* * *

Hocker had a simple reason — okay, two simple reasons — for relocating roughly 2,700 miles to rejoin his coach.

First, it was time to leave the college life.

“I was still living in my college house with Oregon teammates,” he said. “That was part of the reason: ‘I’ve got to get out of here.'”

More important was his relationship with Thomas.

“In running, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” he explained. “I wanted to eliminate as many variables as I could, going into an Olympic year. I knew that was one variable I could control.

“Training is very easy here.”

Hocker and Thomas are of one mind when it comes to preparing for the international stage.

“Ever since I got to the University of Oregon and started training with him, it was pretty clear that our training philosophies clicked,” Hocker said. “We kind of go about racing and training the same way, where we don’t get really excited or we don’t get too down on a bad training session.

“Staying in the middle of emotions sometimes is the name of the game for track and field.”

Hocker, who signed a professional contract with Nike after his junior year at Oregon, is not the only world-class runner training in Blacksburg.

Former Oregon teammates Cooper Teare and Matt Wisner are in town working under Thomas’ tutelage, along with several other runners as part of a group called Team SOVA. Teare, who also has a Nike contract, is a two-time U.S. champion (outdoor 1,500 in 2022, cross-country in 2024).

Team SOVA is the brainchild of Thomas, who has coached Virginia Tech athletes to 74 NCAA All-American nods during his two stints with the Hokies.

“I’ve had some great athletes in the past here at Virginia Tech, and we were always wanting to set up some type of post-collegiate opportunity for people who were at a high level who wanted to continue to train in the same way,” Thomas said.

“This is kind of the first version of that.”

Thomas’ big selling point is Tech’s indoor track facility, Rector Field House, which has hosted five ACC indoor championships and was expanded to approximately 100,000 square feet in a renovation project completed in 2018.

“It’s an awesome training facility for indoor, outdoor, cross-country,” Thomas said. “When I came back and saw it, I felt confident telling these guys there’s no better place to train for what we’re doing. It’s a hidden gem.”

Thomas also is a salesman for Blacksburg and the New River Valley.

“[Elite training] takes so much consistency, a kind of lifestyle,” he said. “It’s a place that’s really easy to get to without a big long drive. You can run right out the door and get some good training in. To have our indoor facility right next to our outdoor track, right next to our cross-country course … that’s pretty hard to find anywhere in the U.S.

“There’s not a lot of getting stuck in traffic, long commutes. The town, it’s just a beautiful place to live.”

Hocker seems convinced.

“We were kind of unsure what we signed up for, moving across the country,” said Hocker, who won three NCAA individual championships at Oregon from 2019-21. “It seemed like a small college town. We were not sure what we were going to get, but we’ve all really thrived here so far.

“It’s really nice. I just bought a house here, so I’m here for the foreseeable future.”

Dallin Leatham was one of the top cross-country, 3,000-meter and 5,000-meter runners in the Big Sky Conference for Weber State University in Utah.

Now Leatham divides his time between working at RunAbout Sports and training along with the Team SOVA runners on the Virginia Tech campus and the town’s Huckleberry Trail.

Leatham knew Hocker was coming to town, but the Olympian’s arrival didn’t register on the former Weber State runner’s radar.

Until it did.

“I knew his face, but I’m not a big starstruck person,” Leatham said. “It is different, though —where I’ve always kind of been really fast, I’ve always been in the front of the group, it’s weird being in the back of the group. That was like, ‘Whoa, that’s kind of a shock.'”

* * *

The 5-foot-10, 145-pound Hocker hopes he is built for a long career.

In 2021, at age 20, he became the youngest man to win the 1,500 at the U.S. Trials, clocking a then-personal-best time of 3:35.34 seconds. He lowered that to 3:31.40 in the Tokyo Olympics, good for sixth place as Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen won in 3:28.32, followed by Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot and Great Britain’s Josh Kerr.

The athletes in Tokyo barely got to taste the usual aura surrounding the Games.

The Tokyo Olympics were postponed a year to 2021 because of COVID-19 and were held in mostly empty venues.

“I’m really excited to be going back. Hopefully get the full experience this year,” said Hocker, who plans to attend the Paris Opening Ceremonies on Friday. “I thought maybe a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Luckily, I get to go back and do it the real way this time.”

Making the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team is no sure bet, even for the most elite athletes. Just ask Athing Mu, who won the gold medal in Tokyo in the women’s 800 but tripped after colliding with another runner in this year’s Trials and did not make the team.

In most cases, finishing among the top three in the U.S. Trials earns an athlete a spot on the Olympic team. However, if an athlete does not meet a minimum standard for time or distance in an event, the individual’s world ranking determines qualification.

Despite winning the Trials in 2021, Hocker had to rely on his world ranking to qualify for Tokyo.

“That’s what’s kind of different about the USA: it’s such a hard team to make,” Hocker said. “A lot of countries select their team. You don’t have to do a trials race. You get hand-picked. So you kind of halfway peak for Trials, then you come down a bit, and then you peak for the Olympics.”

Hocker hit the finish line first in this year’s Trials, running most of the race in fourth place despite a near stumble, and staying on the leaders’ outside shoulder before beginning his kick on the backstretch of the final lap.

He blew past pacesetter and North American record holder Yared Nuguse, and gave two quick looks back at the eventual runner-up before pumping his fist in celebration at the finish line after setting the U.S. Trials record. Former University of Michigan runner Hobbs Kessler placed third to also earn a trip to Paris.

“The strategy was never fall out of reach of that top three,” Hocker said. “Three laps went by and I felt really good. I felt the race might actually be slow. It turns out we were going pretty fast. The fitness was there.”

* * *

Hocker’s body betrayed him in 2022 and 2023. He was sidelined by a stress reaction in his fifth metatarsal in ’22 after qualifying for the 1,500 in the World Outdoor Championships in Eugene. Last year he parked it because of inflammation in both Achilles tendons.

Despite the injuries, he said he remained committed to Thomas’ training methods.

“As long as you’re understanding what caused the injury, you and the coach can work together,” he said. “Starting from scratch with a new coach probably would have been not the wisest decision.

“I got back to full health last year and was able to execute on the world stage, and I knew I could do that again.”

For all the physical training, all the coaching, all the nutrition, all the natural running talent, champions sometimes are determined by who masters the mental aspect of the sport.

“That’s almost half the battle: how much you can control your mind in a situation like that,” Hocker said. “At the starting line of Trials, I was extremely nervous. It’s the nature of it. I practice on ‘forward facing,’ as calm as I can be. Hopefully, if I’m calm on the outside, then my mind will follow.

“You can be defeated at lot of the time when you get to the line. You’re like, ‘There’s so much stress. There’s so much riding on this. I just want this to be over.’ I’ve tried to get better at controlling that. Sometimes you can’t.”

Thomas said the mental game is one of Hocker’s strengths.

Hocker’s recovery from his injuries is the proof.

“Track can be really cruel,” Thomas said. “It’s so hard, just to get to the final at the Olympics, not have any bad luck happen. He learned how that felt. He didn’t like it, obviously, but he didn’t quit, didn’t point fingers, just went back to work. That’s when I knew he was going to have a long career in this sport.”

* * *

Hocker described the U.S. Trials final as an “honest” race, meaning Nuguse set a fast pace in hopes of draining the finishing kick out of the other runners rather than sitting back in the pack hoping to outsprint everyone at the line.

To ensure at least a third-place finish, Hocker was forced to keep pace.

At Cathedral High School in Indianapolis, Hocker won the 2018 Foot Locker Nationals and placed second in the Nike Nationals. At Oregon, he won NCAA titles in the indoor mile (3:53.71) and 3,000 (7:46.15) along with the outdoor 1,500 (3:35.35).

Now that he has stepped up in class again, Hocker is still getting an education on how to compete.

“Two years ago, I probably would have been tucked way back in seventh place [waiting],” he said. “In high school, all I did was front-run my last two years. Winning in college, I’m front-running a lot, too, just because I know I’m the fittest in the race.”

“Right now is the most confident I’ve been as far as putting myself in the race,” he added. “If you’re one of the fittest guys out there you don’t want to race 400 meters. You want to race 1,500 meters. For the last three years, that’s what I’ve been learning … at the professional level, at the global level.”

Hocker’s family will join him in Paris. Thomas and his family also will fly to France after skipping the 2021 trip to Japan.

“It was so restricted because of COVID,” Thomas said. “I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get in the stadium. I basically would have been hanging out in the hotel. We haven’t had a family vacation in a while because of the coaching. Sometimes you have to combine it or it’s never going to happen. This is a good one to combine.”

Thomas said he and the USA national team coaches will work with Hocker on the practice tracks and the warmup track leading up to the race.

“Then hopefully get into the competition site in time to actually see him race,” Thomas said.

* * *

Blacksburg Striders Vice President Amanda Sava wanted to provide Hocker with a proper farewell to Paris, so she came up with last week’s reception.

Attendees wrote messages on “Go Team USA” and “Good Luck Cole” posters, and later ate cake adorned with the familiar Olympic Rings logo.

“I had seen a couple other Olympians from around the country on Instagram, and their local teams or local running stores were doing sendoffs for them,” Sava explained. “I thought that would be a great idea for us to do, especially since they’re a new professional team moving to the area. Kind of also give them a good welcome to the community.”

Recent Blacksburg High School graduate Reese Bradbury, who has earned a track scholarship to High Point University, stood nearby inside the store as Hocker chatted with local runners, quizzing them about their training methods.

“I’m trying to stay calm in the presence of an Olympian,” she laughed.

During the ceremony, Striders representative Jordan Chang presented Hocker with a T-shirt. The Olympian’s official jersey might read “USA,” but he will represent Blacksburg when he hears the starting gun in the Stade de France.

Hocker seemed humbled by the sendoff he received from the locals.

“We always see so many runners out in the town,” he said. “We’ve just been blown away. We would not expect this many runners to just put in the work every day. It’s awesome to see a running community like this.”

Hocker will remain in Europe to run in Diamond Club professional races in Zurich, Lausanne and Brussels before returning to Blacksburg.

Those events, however, do not carry the weight of the Olympic Games.

Ingebrigtsen and Kerr are heavy favorites in the 1,500. Hocker has never beaten either man. But make no mistake: the Indiana native by way of Oregon aims to return to Virginia with a gold medal.

“I said the same thing in 2021 [but] it was kind of, ‘I’m there. Why would I not go for gold?'” he said. “I was kind of happy to be there, but this year I truly realize my potential.”

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