2025 USATF Outdoors: HISTORIC MEN’S 5000M ON TAP AT USATF CHAMPIONSHIPS

HISTORIC MEN’S 5000M ON TAP AT USATF CHAMPIONSHIPS
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission. 

EUGENE (30-Jul) — While American middle distance running has garnered a lot of attention over the last two seasons punctuated by a gold medal and Olympic record for Cole Hocker at the 2024 Paris Olympics in the 1500m, athletes in the 5000m have this season brought the longer event to a new zenith.  So far this year five American men –Grant Fisher, Nico Young, Graham Blanks, Cooper Teare, and Cole Hocker– have broken 13 minutes.  Five of the six-fastest USA marks in history have been set this year, and Fisher (12:44.09) and Young (12:45.27) have run national records indoors and outdoors, respectively (Fisher has the absolute record).

“The sport, especially in the U.S., has grown leaps and bounds in the last decade or so,” Fisher told reporters here at a press conference in advance of the four-day Toyota USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships at Hayward Field at the University of Oregon.  “You look at the all-time marks now.  We’ve had three guys break 12:50 in one year, whereas in the past you might have one guy that would break 13:00 every other year.  The depth is increasing a ton.”

That depth will be on full display on Sunday afternoon when approximately 25 men will line up for a straight final in which the top three will provisionally qualify for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September.  At last year’s Olympic Trials, also held here in Eugene, a field of 30 athletes was first narrowed down to 16 through two preliminary heats.  This year’s race will more closely resemble a mass-start road race rather than a small, super-elite final.

“It gets harder and harder every year,” continued Fisher, who won the national 5000m title in both 2024 and 2022 and finished second in 2021.  “There’s really stiff competition.  Guys that are younger and younger are training harder and harder, and that is producing way more depth at younger ages.  We have a really competitive 5-K team.”

Fisher, 28, who won bronze medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics in both the 5000m and 10,000m, is the oldest among the top contenders by at least three years.  Blanks and Young are both 23, Hocker is 24, and…