The 2024 Olympic Games haven’t been short on superstars. Simone Biles, Noah Lyles, Katie Ledecky, LeBron James. Snoop Dogg. But I don’t want to talk about them. Everyone has talked about them.

I’d like to talk about Cole Hocker.

If you haven’t heard of Cole Hocker before, that can be forgiven. His story couldn’t be much more Middle American. He grew up in Indianapolis. He attended a Catholic high school. He ran track and field in high school, as many Americans do (I did). When he went to college for running, that made him stand out a bit. But still, plenty of kids run in college. Even after he went pro, Hocker’s story wasn’t that interesting. He won a silver medal at the World Athletics Indoor Championships this year: an event most Americans have probably never heard of. He placed sixth in the 1500 meter in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. At the 2023 World Championships he placed seventh.

Now it’s important to note that I’m saying all of this isn’t interesting, not that it’s not impressive. I could never dream of placing sixth at the Olympic Games, because first I’d have to actually qualify for the Olympics, which I could never do. Hocker had a successful collegiate career, and has placed well in international races. But in the end, none of that matters. Not anymore.

In Olympic competition, the 1500 meter is often regarded as a premiere event in athletics. It’s not so much a test of speed as endurance and strategy. The last American man to win a gold medal in the 1500 meter was Matthew Centrowitz, Jr., in 2016. In this year’s race, the two favorites were Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway and Josh Kerr of the UK. American Yared Nuguse was seen as America’s best hope for a medal, but the big question was who would win gold. Ingebrigtsen and Kerr had been engaged in a war of words leading up to the Olympics. So, which one of them would win?

As it turns out, it was neither of them.

Instead, the world was treated to what will become one of the greatest moments in Olympic history: Ingebrigtsen fading, Kerr in the lead, until he was passed by Cole Hocker. Hocker poured everything he had into one desperate push to the finish. And he arrived an Olympic champion. Kerr settled for silver. Nuguse, Hocker’s teammate, took bronze, marking the first time US men had taken multiple medals in the event in over a century. Ingebrigtsen, for all his bluster, didn’t even place.

The Olympic Games are, at their core, a celebration of human excellence. The greatest athletes of the world gather to display their prowess. But the true value of the Olympics isn’t the superstars proving how good they are. It’s the Cole Hockers of the world. Everyone was talking about Noah Lyles going into the Games. And with good reason: Lyles is an incredible athlete, a great competitor. But now he and Cole Hocker have at least one thing in common: they’re both Olympic gold medalists.

Even Lyles’s story is one of struggle: he overcame asthma on his way to becoming an Olympic champion. And that’s another element of the Olympic Games: perseverance. The Olympics remind us every two years that we still live in a world where the struggle is worth it. Where anyone can win, as long as they want it bad enough. This Olympic Games has seen an asthmatic kid become the fastest man on Earth. It’s seen a superstar athlete lose to a young woman from Saint Lucia: a tiny nation in the Caribbean, which had never before won an Olympic medal of any color. It’s seen a gymnastics podium composed entirely of black women. And it’s seen the biggest stars in distance running lose to a kid from Indiana.

If you’re a young person reading this, read these words very carefully:

Nothing is impossible.

Never let anyone tell you something is beyond your abilities. Work hard. Be passionate. Run and jump and don’t let anyone stop you. Delight in proving everyone wrong. Because we need you. This world needs scientists to enrich our minds, sure. It needs artists to enrich our hearts, absolutely. But it also needs Olympians to enrich our souls. And that’s where you come in. – MK