Get to Know Cole Hocker: The Olympic Runner Who Made History
“I kind of told myself that I’m in this race too,” Hocker said after the event, per ESPN. “If they let me fly under the radar, then so be it. I think that might’ve just been the best.”
Kerr ultimately took the silver medal, while USA’s Nuguse earned bronze.
Ingebrigsten, for his part, fell to the fourth position. “I opened with a 54-second lap,” the Norwegian athlete said of his running after the event. “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.”
But while Hocker’s win may have shocked viewers, the runner himself never doubted his chances.
“It might be an upset to a lot of people,” he noted after the event, “but if you’ve been following my season, you’d know I’d be capable of it.”