Cole Hocker — “They never saw me coming”

It was a two-person showdown for the men’s Olympic 1500 Meter final on Tuesday.

And then…it wasn’t.

Defending Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen from Sweden was to duel Great Britain’s John Kerr for the gold medal. Kerr has won the World Championships 2 years ago, so it was a classic duel.

And for most of the race, it went as expected. Ingebrigtsen set a blistering pace, but Kerr kept just close enough to make it interesting.

Lagging back in the fourth to eighth spots was the somewhat non-threatening looking American, Cole Hocker, a quality runner in his own right, but not quite the world-class category of the two aforementioned.

Could he challenge for a bronze medal? Bring the US a rare 1500 medal stand winner? Maybe, and for most of the race, he hung near enough to the top runners.

Then came the final lap, which is sure to go down as one of the great upsets in recent Olympic history.

All of a sudden Hocker starts to move up. He is gaining ground on the leaders. He makes a move, but will it be enough? Looks like no, as he gets squeezed out from the inside track.

“Run for the bronze,” he said afterward, recalling those final moments.

But then the unthinkable happens. Hocker finds a late opening on the inside—and this time he takes it and somehow, somewhere from the deep within finds an extra pedal to step on and flies by the unsuspecting Kerr, and the then fading Ingebrigsten.

The two of them concentrate so much on each other that they completely forget about ( or disregard) any of the other competitors.

“They never saw me coming,” says Hocker. “And when they did? It was too late.”

An amazing finish, and one Americans celebrated resoundingly. An upset for the ages. Only in the Olympic Games, and only because one seemingly unsuspecting contender believed he could do it.