T&FN Interview — Bryce Hoppel

BRINGING IT BIG with a striking breakthrough in an Olympic year: it’s any athlete’s dream scenario, usually constructed through years of sweat and toil and often ignited by heeding the heart and gut. Bryce Hoppel can tell you as much after a ’24 season in which he claimed American Recordholder status in the 800 in an Olympic final comparable in the modern era only to the epic 2-lap medal race of London 2012.

Midland, Texas, native Hoppel finished 0.17 back from the bronze as he leaned for the line in Paris, yet medals never bespeak the entire breadth of achievement in an Olympic final.

At 27 Hoppel axed 1.10 from his PR on the highest stage and with his time would have won every previous 2-lap final in the 128-year history of the Games save one — that London ’12 race captured by David Rudisha with the still-standing World Record. The Kansas alum’s 1:41.67 clocking would have been sufficient for silver in every previous Olympic final.

The result shocked Hoppel though on some level it did not, as he explained to T&FN in this in-person interview, conducted just before the holiday season.

Hoppel’s nailed-it 2024 campaign, springboarding from the top of the World Indoor podium in March to his finest running summer yet, successfully welded a fruitful 8-year partnership with KU assistant Michael Whittlesey to synergy from training at altitude with a new group of training partners, including 800/1500 Olympian Hobbs Kessler. Read on. (Continued below)