The bell rang furiously. One lap to go. The 70,000 fans at Stade de France roared.
“I just remember hearing the loudest stadium I've ever heard,” American Cole Hocker remembered 18 hours later.
Time was running out in a 1500m Olympic final that had been hyped with "Race of the Century" treatment. The two men behind much of the hoopla — Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Great Britain’s Josh Kerr — were in the lead.
Hocker was invisible back in fifth place. Fellow American Yared Nuguse was in fourth. They trailed, but the U.S. teammates oozed confidence.
“I knew we could win,” Nuguse said.
Hocker, too. "I knew that if I could get it right, it would be a gold medal."
So, they kicked. Mile runners often talk about the kick — the ability to sprint to the finish after falling back early. For those who can kick, it’s a secret weapon to victory.
With 100 meters to go and Hocker and back in fifth, it was time.
“My instincts took over,” Hocker said.
I was somehow able to find another gear.
The 23-year-old Hocker has chiseled his reputation as one of the world’s best finishers — and in the race of a lifetime, his kick was electrifying.
“Once I found that extra gear," he recalled, "I knew I was gonna be first across the finish line.”
From the inside lane, Hocker kicked with every fiber in his leg muscles, and with every scrap of mental strength he could summon.
“My body just kind of did it for me,” he said. “My mind was all there and I saw that finish line.”
Hocker surged past Kerr. He surged past Ingebrigtsen. And he crossed that line in 3 minutes, 27.65 seconds — a signature victory in Olympic record time.
The race had been billed as Ingebrigtsen vs. Kerr. But Hocker had pulled off a shocker.
“I told myself that I’m in this race, too,” Hocker said. “If they let me fly under the radar, then so be it. I think that might’ve just been the best. I think it was a surprise to everyone else.”
Hocker is just one part of Tuesday’s American-dominated story, however.
Back to that final few meters: As the finish line neared and the crowd noise peaked, Nuguse was thinking just like Hocker. He was ready to kick into medal position.
"I knew they were all going to have great kicks,” Nuguse said of his opponents. “But I know mine has always proven reliable in the past. So, with 200 to go, I was just like, 'I know we can do this, like right now.’”
Nuguse was right. He sprinted past Ingebrigtsen and onto his first Olympic medal podium. He was one hundredth of a second from silver, but a photo at the finish determined that Kerr had just edged him. Meanwhile, the defending champion Ingebrigtsen was stunningly left without a medal.
When Nuguse crossed the line — just 0.15 seconds behind Hocker — the 25-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, felt sweet relief, especially after a quad injury kept him out of the Tokyo Games.
“It’s a real pinnacle of our sport, being able to come to the world stage where everyone is performing at their absolute best,” Nuguse said. "And to share it with a fellow American makes it even better.”
Hocker and Nuguse became the first Americans to share a medal podium in the men’s 1500m since Abel Kiviat and Norman Taber at the 1912 Stockholm Games.
Hours after their triumph, someone showed the duo a bit of grainy, black-and-white video from that 1912 race.
“If we needed any more understanding of how long ago that was, it was just a dirt track with no lanes,” Hocker said.
On that dirt track 112 years ago, Great Britain’s Arnold Jackson set a then-Olympic record with a gold medal-winning time of 3:56.8. Hocker was nearly 30 full seconds faster than that on Tuesday — running on 200,000-plus square feet of purple vulcanized rubber.
“We delivered,” Hocker said. “The only thing better than getting a medal is having another Team USA person on the podium.”