HOW OLLIE PULLED OFF HIS MIRACLE
WITH a lap to go, Ollie Hoare started to panic.
Until then he’d been happy with the fast pace of the Commonwealth Games 1500m final, with Kenyan pair Abel Kipsang and 2019 world champion Timothy Cheruiyot pushing it from the front.
The Australian had settled in fourth for most of the race, but when he saw new world champion Jake Wightman of Scotland cruise up on his outside, he started to worry. “It was a matter of pulling the kick at the right time,” Hoare explains. “I went through on the inside with a lap to go and I saw Jake next to me and started to panic because he’s the world champion.
“You can hear the Scottish roar in the stadium, so I tried to hold my composure.”
Wightman had made a surge around the outside and by the time the field was entering the straight, Hoare had to make a crucial decision. “I made sure I covered my spot on the bend, to not let anyone else pass me,” he said.
That allowed him to make what will go down as the greatest race move of his career, because as soon as he eased out into lane three, the Australian knew he was going to win the gold medal. “When I got out to lane three it was all about holding form and just running like bloody hell,” Hoare explained.
“When I made the move to lane three, I could tell I had him (Cheruiyot) because he can’t gauge where anyone else is.
“You’re in a very vulnerable position, even if you’re of the calibre that he is, and I saw he was starting to lock up.
“I had more juice in the tank and I wanted it.”
Cheruiyot could sense someone looming large, but Hoare had played it smart, stayed a lane away so the Kenyan couldn’t react and over the last five metres he began staggering. By this stage the Australian was motoring and he breasted the line in a Commonwealth Games record time of 3min 30.12sec to defeat Cheruiyot (3min 30.21sec), with Wightman third (3min 30.53sec). Hoare immediately slumped to the track with his hands on his head as the enormity of what he’d just achieved started to sink in – he’d become just the second Australian to win the historic middledistance event at a Commonwealth Games, joining the great Herb Elliott. Elliott won the mile at the 1958 Cardiff Games. Adding to the significance of Hoare’s performance was the calibre of the field. While some events at the Commonwealth Games might lack quality, the men’s 1500m was stacked. This fact didn’t go unnoticed by one of the greatest 1500m runners in history, World Athletics boss Seb Coe, who was trackside in Birmingham.
“It was a sensational run,” Coe said.
“The golden rule is to stay in contact (with the leaders) and then you are in a position to capitalise when things start to go wrong for others. He stayed calm over the last lap and he absolutely capitalised.” Given that just two weeks earlier he’d blown up in the world championships semi-final in Eugene in a run he would later describe as his worst race in years, the turnaround was as incredible as the race he’d just nailed. “For me to be able to have a low like that at a major championship and come back here and win it, shows me that I’m not just about one race as an athlete,” he said. Hoare hopes his achievement opens the doors for young kids back home in Australia.
“That’s what I want to portray, believe in yourself, back yourself,” he said.