Olympic Daily Dispatch Day 5: An American Renaissance

It’s been 8 years since an American man was atop the podium in a global 1500m championship. It’s been 12 since an American woman has won the 200m on the global stage.

All that changed last night, when Team USA went on an incredible tear of medal-winning in the space of about an hour. Americans picked up gold and bronze in the men’s 1500m thanks to stellar finishes from Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse, silver in the hammer throw via Annette Echikunwoke, and another gold and bronze in the 200m to cap off the night with Gabby Thomas and Brittany Brown.

Americans running the table is generally not news in track and field, but each one of these medals was special in its own right. Hocker and Nuguse are both rising stars who delivered on the promise of their potential for the first time on the global level. Thomas has steadily upgraded from bronze to silver to gold in every championship appearance she’s made. Brown is the consummate workhorse who always gets the job done but never seems to get the respect she deserves. And Echikunwoke got the last laugh after being unfairly left off Nigeria’s Olympic team in 2021 and changing national teams.

Elsewhere, it was a story of “winners stay winning.” Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece has spent the last three years winning virtually everything there is to win in the long jump: Olympic gold in 2021 and 2024, World outdoor gold in 2023, and World Indoor gold in 2022 and 2024. The one non-winning leap of recent was his silver medal in 2022… not a bad off-day. In the steeplechase, Winfred Yavi of Bahrain backed up her 2023 World title with an Olympic title to match ahead of Tokyo champ Peruth Chemutai. And Canadian Camryn Rogers picked up her third medal in the hammer throw (second straight gold) — now she has as many global medals as she won NCAA championships at UC Berkeley.

More U.S. gold may be coming up soon, as Team USA put three athletes in the final of both the women’s 400m hurdles and the men’s 400m yesterday. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will be favored to defend her Olympic title, but with Bahamian Steven Gardiner out of the 400m competition entirely, a crowd of contenders will be vying for gold in his absence. Michael Norman and Quincy Hall will want to capitalize for the red, white, and blue.

As we head toward the second half of the track and field schedule, our CITIUS MAG crew continues to offer top-tier reporting and banter from Paris with the GOOD MORNING TRACK AND FIELD crew featuring Eric Jenkins, Mitch Dyer, and Karen Leisewicz at 8:30 am E.T. each day and the TORCH TALK podcast after the final events wrap up. Make sure to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify for daily reports straight from the heart of the action.

What To Watch On Day 6

Soufiane El Bakkali of Morocco goes for his fourth straight global gold in the men’s steeplechase final, but surely Ethiopian four-time silver medalist Lamecha Girma will want to turn the tables in his rival. The aforementioned men’s 400m final could be very, very fast as three men have already broken 44 seconds in the semis. And in the women’s pole vault, Katie Moon will fight to defend her Olympic title.

In the discus final, up-and-coming (but not so up-and-coming, as he’s already the world record holder) Lithuanian Mykolas Alekna will surely want to add another Olympic gold medal to the family collection — his father Virgilijus already has two. And Noah Lyles’s quest for triple gold continues in the men’s 200m semifinal, where he’ll want to get the best lane in the final with the least effort possible.

You can find a full schedule and live results here.

Race of the Day: Men’s 1500m

Where do you even start with this race?

If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. It’s compelling from start to finish, and there’s a full narrative in almost every step. Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Brit Josh Kerr have been chirping at each other in the media for going on a year, and when Ingebrigtsen took the race out at an audacious pace through 800m, splitting 54.8 then 1:51, it seemed for a moment like he’d played his cards first and best. But his noticeable gap at 900m had evaporated 100 meters later, and heading into the final lap, the kickers were jockeying for position and champing at the bit.

For anyone who remembered Budapest 2023, this looked familiar: surely Kerr would swing wide around the final turn and leave the field in his dust. And he did manage to outkick his Norwegian rival — but he hadn’t accounted for a 23-year-old American with an almost supernatural ability to accelerate clipping his heels.

Cole Hocker twice tried to pass Kerr on his inside, the first time unsuccessfully. With 100 meters to go, Hocker was boxed and had to make a split-second decision — burn some energy to cut wide or hang tight and hope the inside opened up eventually? He chose the latter, and a few strides later it paid off. As Kerr surged and Ingebrigtsen faded, Hocker found just enough daylight on the rail to unleash his unmatchable top speed, and all of a sudden Kerr had no chance. In the final few steps, Kerr actually had to fight hard for silver as a hard-charging Yared Nuguse was working to join his teammate on the podium. Ultimately, Kerr held off Nuguse by 1/100th of a second, picking up his third global medal in four appearances.

Not only was the race incredibly thrilling, it was incredibly fast. At 3:27.65, 3:27.79, and 3:27.80, Hocker, Kerr, and Nuguse are now #7, #8, and #9 on the all time list. Hocker is still a tick away from Bernard Lagat’s American record of 3:27.40, but Kerr broke Mo Farah’s British record in the event. Funnily enough, Nuguse’s nearly-two-second PB knocks him back from #2 to #3 on the U.S. list as Hocker leapfrogs him.

Ingebrigtsen finished fourth, just short of his fourth straight global medal, and had some nice things to say about the competition afterward. In fifth place, Hobbs Kessler did well to round out the scoring for Team USA, and became the fifth American in history under 3:30 with his 3:29.45. From top to bottom, this final was one for the ages — and the record books.

Athlete of the Day: Gabby Thomas

If Gabby Thomas was feeling the weight of expectations headed into yesterday’s final, you’d never know it by the way she executed her race.

It’s one thing to enter the Olympics as the world leader and to feel some measure of relief when the news broke that World champ Shericka Jackson had withdrawn from the event with injury. It’s another to enter the final with an Olympic-sized target on your back, the newly-crowned 100m champion on your outside, and 2019 World champion Dina Asher-Smith hungry for medals.

But Thomas executed her race perfectly, keeping her cool as she came off the turn and opening up her trademark homestretch speed to decisively shut the door on the field. As she crossed the finish line in 21.83, the relief was palpable. As an observer, you couldn’t see the crushing pressure until the moment it was lifted, when it became patently obvious.

Thomas is already a proven commodity on Team USA’s relays so hopefully her job is not done. And with impressive range stretching over both 100m and 400m, she could easily pick up two more gold medals if given the chance. But this one will surely feel the sweetest — the first to come and the hardest to earn.

Photo of the Day

An ecstatic Winfred Yavi of Bahrain crosses the line to pick up her second global gold medal in the steeplechase in as many years.

Social Moment of the Day

200m bronze medalist Brittany Brown is one of our favorite interviews, because she’s fearless about sharing her innermost feelings with the world. One of the best and easiest athletes to root for.

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