IN QUIET BLACKSBURG, HOCKER RETOOLS FOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS SEASON
By David Monti, @d9monti.bsky.social
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved – Used with permission.
NEW YORK (06-Feb) — About 45,000 people live in the western Virginia city of Blacksburg, about a four-hour drive southwest from Washington, D.C., but only one resident there has an Olympic gold medal in athletics: Cole Hocker.
Hocker, 23, who won the 1500m at the Paris 2024 Olympics in a Games record 3:27.65, loves the calm surroundings that Blacksburg –home of Virginia Tech– provides. It’s been the perfect place for the reigning USA 1500m champion to settle down after last year’s Olympic excitement and re-boot ahead of the 2025 season where he hopes to win a world title in the same discipline in Tokyo in September.
“Blacksburg is very quiet; I really love that,” Hocker told reporters today at a press conference in advance of Saturday’s 117th Millrose Games where he will run the 3000m. “I just feel like I can just always really dial-in.” He added: “Being isolated really helps that.”
Hocker, and his training partner and former University of Oregon teammate Cooper Teare, do their workouts under the supervision of Virginia Tech director of track and cross country, Ben Thomas, who formerly coached at Oregon and who has overseen Hocker’s training for six years. The two athletes do nearly all of their training together. Teare, 25, is mainly a 5000m runner with a personal best of 12:54.72, but he’s also fast and boasts a 3:32.16 1500m best. Hocker said that Teare is the perfect training partner, helping Hocker build his strength and endurance on Blacksburg’s many running trails.
“We probably do about 95% of the training together,” Hocker told Race Results Weekly. “Maybe more than that. When it gets to that very nitty gritty, if he’s going more for a 5-K and I’m going more for a fifteen, it can fluctuate a little there.”
Hocker continued: “But I think the most obvious way we complement each other is he pulls me. He ran 12:54 in the 5-K; I ran 12:58. That’s a difference there. He pulls me. Anything over 3000m.”
But Hocker, who also won the silver medal at the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships in the 1500m last March, helps Teare with his speed. At last summer’s USA Olympic Trials, Hocker closed in 52.7 seconds for the final lap, even faster than the 53.4 he clocked in Paris. Teare has to work to stay close.
“Under 3000 meters I’m pulling him,” Hocker…
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