He can win in 3:42 or get second or third in 3:40 to guarantee a high enough ranking to get selected. There is a chance he can make it in with any time and a top 3, but that’s risky given the world rankings quota LRC note. Here is what we wrote about it in our recap. https://www.letsrun.com/news/2021/06/mens-1500-semifinals-the-epic-final-everyone-wanted-is-all-set-minus-hobbs-kessler/
LRC wrote:
If you look at the updated World Athletics “Road To Olympic Games 2020” where they list those with the standard and world rankings for the Olympics, Cole Hocker actually is the 46th person in line to get to the Olympics in the 1500 once you limit things to 3 per country and they take 45. But since 3 of the 45 people ahead of him are American, he’d be the last guy in assuming no one goes ahead of him this weekend (the qualifying ends Tuesday). And that includes World Athletics letting in a guy from Equatorial Guinea with a 3:46 pb.
Now, Hocker’s ranking could improve on Sunday. If he finishes top 3, he will get at least 80 bonus points. The problem is that won’t improve his ranking unless the race is somewhat honest as if the race is tactical the bonus points won’t matter at all as the points you get for running a certain time will be too low.
If Hocker gets third in at least 3:40.00, his world ranking should jump up at least two spots. The problem is if it’s slower than that, his ranking may not improve. And the winning time at USAs each of the last 3 times it’s been held has been over 3:43.
So if we were Oregon coach Ben Thomas, would we tell Hocker to worry about the pace?
Honestly, we’d tell him to race for top 3. If he gets top 3 and somehow isn’t in line for the Games and Seb Coe won’t use common sense and let him in (after all, America is going to send 3 anyway. The rules should be if you have 5 entrants in line to go, you can send any 3 you want), we think he’s talented enough to go hit the standard in a last chance meet on Tuesday. Maybe if we were Thomas, we might tell him make sure you hit 800 in at least 2:02.
We know one thing, it would be a travesty that a guy who ran 3:50 in the mile, 3:35 for 1500 and won the NCAA title wouldn’t be in the Olympics while someone like Amos Bartelsmeyer is just ahead of him.