09 Apr Beyond the track with Cole Hocker
Growing up, Cole Hocker dreamt of becoming a professional athlete. At first, he wanted to go to the NFL. Then, the NBA. “It didn’t take very long for me to realize that wasn’t gonna happen,” Cole laughed. But, he has always been someone who loves to compete. He eventually found a natural talent for running. In 2021, his dreams of being a professional athlete became reality when he announced the start of his professional running career and partnership with Nike. This past summer at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Cole earned the gold medal in the 1500m while setting an Olympic Record. Though his life looks a little different than he originally thought as a young kid with aspirations for the NFL and NBA, Cole is a successful professional athlete who is grateful to his parents for providing him the tools and resources necessary for success as a pro athlete.
LIFE OF A PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE OUTSIDE OF TRAINING
Before going pro, Cole ran at the University of Oregon. In college, Cole enjoyed unwinding when he wasn’t training or competing by hanging out with friends, usually at a coffee shop. A big coffee-drinker himself, he said, “That’s a big thing in every city now, but I feel like the Pacific Northwest especially, […] I feel like they kind of started the coffee movement, or just like a coffee shop with a good vibe. So that’s what I do with a lot of my buddies. […] Go to a coffee shop and do schoolwork while I was in school, or just hang out.”
Cole made the decision to go pro in 2021, aftercompeting at the University of Oregon since 2019. It’s safe to assume that going from a student-athlete to a full-time professional athlete is a shift that undoubtedly requires a degree of lifestyle changes to go along with it. “When I made the decision to turn pro, I was really enticed by the idea of just being fully focused on running,” Cole said. “The biggest change is what I’m doing in between sessions and training.” To be the best at something, it requires all your time and effort. Because of this, when Cole isn’t training or competing, he said he really doesn’t do much with his downtime. He makes sure to stay off his feet, and he takes rest and recovery seriously. “I just look at it as being really dialed in. […] I think in almost every sport, dialed in means it’s pretty boring outside of competition and training.”
MUSIC, MEDIA MAKING AND MORE
Cole’s downtime really isn’t as “boring” as he might make it out to be. He has a YouTube channel where he documents training and racing. Cole also revealed he has a passion for music, and often he finds himself on his laptop making beats or other sounds. “I’m definitely a big music head,” Cole said. He even has a song released on Spotify under the name “davvage,” and he makes various beats on SoundCloud. Cole is also self-taught in piano and guitar, and he started taking drum lessons at around 10 years old. “I kind of developed a sense of rhythm and then that’s just carried on. I don’t have a full drum set, but you can do anything on a computer,” Cole said.
Cole goes through these music-making phases periodically. He said it’s something he’ll either do the entire time between practices, or go months without. Music is something that gets Cole in the right headspace, whether listening to Kanye or classical music before big races, or making his own to relax in between training.
DEDICATED TO THE CRAFT
At the end of the day, Cole does whatever it takes to be the best. “I owe it to my younger self to continue to keep on killing it and just keep on doing the same things that got me here,” he said. From NFL and NBA dreams to fulfilling the dream of being a professional athlete in a different capacity and winning gold for his country for track, Cole wants to be remembered as someone who gave 100% to something. As evidenced by his performance this past Olympics and the fact he already has eyes on LA 2028, Cole is an incredible example of what being dialed in 24/7 looks like. With his determined and hard-working mindset, at just 23 years old, Cole’s potential for continued success is limitless.
Written by Parker Neumeier, Journalism and Political Science student at the University of Wisconsin- Madison