Grant Fisher wins first U.S. 10,000-meter Olympic medal in 12 years
The 27-year-old makes the podium in a much-anticipated race that was a barnburner from start to finish. Former Newbury Park High standout Nico Young also runs under the previous Olympic record.
PARIS – As Grant Fisher lined up for the Olympic Games 10,000 meter final in Tokyo in 2021, his first race for Team USA at the senior level, he found himself next to Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei.
The previous August Cheptegei had set a world record at 5,000 meters and then lowered the 10,000 world record that October to 26 minutes, 11.0 seconds.
“And I remember I had just PRed in the 10K and I ran 27:11, which was exactly a minute slower,” Fisher recalled late Friday night. “And I was like, ‘How was I supposed to race this guy?’”
Yet there was Fisher, the former Stanford NCAA champion and Michigan prep superstar, three years later in the Olympic 10,000 final at Stade de France Friday night running lap after lap near the front, third, fourth, second place, in the deepest Olympic 10,000 field in history, running, shoulder to shoulder, running on the heels of the very runners, the Ethiopians, the Kenyans, the Ugandans, who he had been raised to believe he couldn’t compete with.
Running like he belonged there because he did.
Cheptegei, in what he said was his final track race, won in an Olympic record 26:43.14. It would take several minutes before a photo could finally determine that Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi had edged Fisher by just two-hundredths of a second for the silver medal– 26:43.44 to 26:43.46.
Fisher, 27, had claimed the bronze medal in the greatest 10,000 final in Olympic history, the first U.S. medal in the event in 12 years, only the fourth in history.
“It means so much,” Fisher said. You’ve got to be tough to win a medal. I made it today, and it feels incredible.”
Which could also describe the entire race. There were at least 14 lead changes and in the end, less than a second separated the first six finishers. Thirteen runners ran under the previous Olympic record of 27:01.17 held for the past 16 years by Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele. Among those 13 was Nico Young, the former Newbury Park High superstar and Northern Arizona NCAA champion, who held onto the lead group until the final 800 meters, finishing 12th in 26:58.14.
“I think this is going to be great for American distance running that this happened,” Young said of a night that further reflected a changing mindset within U.S. middle and long distance running over the past dozen years, especially the last three.
It was also the validation of an athlete who had the courage to make a bold move nearly a year ago that was the first significant step toward the Olympic podium. Fisher stunned American track and field last year when he announced that he was leaving the Oregon-based, Nike-financed Bowerman Track Club and moving to Park City and reuniting with his high school coach.
But to Fisher it made perfect sense.
“I’ve been close to the medals before but never gotten one,” he said. “I made a big change a year ago and one of the pieces of that was to move to Park City and spend more time at altitude. That was one piece of a puzzle that bumped me up one second over the course of a 10,000-meter race – and I think it was a big piece.
“Pretty much everyone that medals in the 10,000 meters lives all year at altitude.”
There were other pieces.
“It was just to optimize everything I could. One was my altitude plan, one was to individualize my training better, switching coaches was a piece, implementing different ideas in training.
“I do a lot more threshold work, choosing high frequency of workouts over high intensity, more lactate testing,” said Fisher, who was often joined in training by fellow Park City resident and former Bowerman TC runner Matthew Centrowitz, the 2016 Olympic 1,500 champion. “Trying to hone in on everything I could. There are things I left behind to make this change. I kind of pieced it all together. Generally being happy in my set-up was a piece. All those things add up. So many things have to go right over a year to get on a podium.”
But the biggest piece was that Fisher, fourth in the 2022 World Championships 10,000, sixth in the 5,000, believed he could run with the East Africans.
So there he was up front the whole race through a night where Stade de France sounded like it was witnessing the final minutes of a deadlocked World Cup final.
“The biggest stadium I’ve ever been in was Tokyo and that one was dead silent,” Fisher said, referring to the 2021 Games’ ban on spectators because of the COVID pandemic. “This was so, so different. From the first lap, the crowd was screaming. I couldn’t hear anything the entire race. The 10,000 meters doesn’t get a lot of love sometimes, but that crowd made it feel like we were the best show in town. It was super fun. It was a fast, fast pace. I felt like I was in a good position the whole way and just gave it everything with a lap to go.”
Lap after brutal lap, Fisher covered every move the Ethiopians threw at the field.
“I knew this was going to be a really tough race with six of the fastest 14 guys of all-time in it,” said Canada’s Mo Ahmed, Fisher’s former Bowerman TC training partner.
After nearly 25 laps, more than six miles of running faster than anyone ever had at an Olympic Games, Fisher came off the final turn into the homestretch not just running with the East Africans but battling them for a medal.
He found an opening, passed Ahmed to move into second with 50 meters to go, gaining on Cheptegei in the lead with Aregawi also coming on strong. With 40 meters left, it looked like he might catch Cheptegei. With 30 meters left, he began to tie up. Aregawi pulled even, then Fisher surged ahead of the Ethiopian one last time only to have his lunge at the finish line come a blink of the eye short of the silver medal.
“You replay that situation over and over in your head in the lead-up,” Fisher said. “I was injured last year when the World Championships were going on. I really wanted to get back on to the global stage. These races always come down to the last lap, and specifically the last 100 meters. To be in position and fighting, you’re right on the line the whole race.
“That last 100 meters, you can see your goal in front of you. I can count to three. This sport is defined by the top three. I’ve been outside that every time up until today. I’ve seen one-two-three slip away from me before. It feels really good.
“These guys have been on the podium before; this is my first time. My margins were probably a little more slim than these guys’ margins. I needed to execute a pretty spotless race.
“I don’t have the lights-out speed to make up a ton of ground instantly. I needed to be in a good position and it worked out well.”
Fisher was a high school sophomore when he met Billy Mills, the 1964 Olympic 10,000 champion, at a Michigan sports banquet.
“I have a T-shirt that was signed by him when I was a kid,” Fisher said. “He’s one of the few people that have stood on top of the podium in the men’s distance races for the U.S. Really inspiring, he has a great story, I’m happy to continue that legacy a little bit and get a medal for the U.S.”
Mills in Tokyo pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, storming out of nowhere down the chaotic homestretch of the 10,000 meter final, perhaps distance running’s most unlikely gold medalist ever.
“Look at Mills!” NBC announcer Dick Bank shouted as Mills passed Australia’s Ron Clarke, the pre-Olympic favorite, then Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia to charge into the lead.“Look at Mills!” Bank shouted again, sounding like a 20th-century Paul Revere.
Clarke and Gammoudi had no response as Mills flew by them, Bank unleashing a celebratory whoop that chased his final steps.
But Mills’ victory and Bank’s call didn’t signal an American middle or long-distance running revolution on the track.
Jim Ryun, is considered by many as the greatest miler ever, but had no chance against altitude raised and trained Kip Keino of Kenya in the 1968 Games 1,500 in the thin air of Mexico City. Four years later his Olympic dream came crashing down when he was tripped in the 1972 Olympic heats. Marty Liquori would have been a gold medal contender at 1,500 in 1972 and the 5,000 in 1976 but missed both Games due to injury.
Oregon’s Steve Prefontaine was on the verge of threatening world records from 3,000 to 10,000 meters only to be killed in a 1975 car accident just days before a world record attempt at the 10,000 in Helsinki.
Jimmy Carter’s ill-conceived and ineffective decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics robbed miler Steve Scott, steeplechaser Henry Marsh, and Craig Virgin, the world cross country champion shots at medals in Moscow.
Alberto Salazar was among the world’s best on the track and the marathon in the early 80s until he pushed himself too hard too often. For the next 30 years, Americans didn’t seem to want to push themselves hard enough.
“When I was a kid, Billy Mills was one of the few guys who made it to the top,” Fisher said. “They are few and far between.
“The narrative when I was a kid was, in the U.S., you just can’t run with these African guys, the fast European guys. I hope I’ve shown I’m capable of that.”
Meb Keflezighi captured the silver medal in the 2004 Olympic marathon and then won the 2009 New York and 2014 Boston marathons, the first American to win both races since 1983.
For Fisher, the U.S. breakthrough on the track was Galen Rupp’s 10,000 silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Four years later Centrowitz, like Rupp an Oregon alum and member of Nike’s Oregon Project, became the first American to win the Olympic 1,500 in more than a century with a tactical masterpiece.
“In the past three years, my mindset has shifted a lot,” Fisher said recalling that night in Tokyo when he lined up next to Cheptegei. “I became a better athlete, but my mindset has shifted too. I hope people can see that when my mindset shifts, so should everybody’s in the U.S. as well. People are capable of great things, you have to believe in yourself and put yourself in a position in order for good things to happen.”
Young noticed Friday night.
“I think L.A. is going to be perfect,” he said when asked about his prospects for the 2028 Games.”
And Cheptegei also noticed.
Toward the end of their victory lap Friday night Cheptegei put his arm around the American.
“For me, it is so exciting to see that, witness that Grant was also part of the medalists today,” Cheptegei said recalling the moment. “He really, really fought for it. And what is also so amazing is that he’s been always number four and then it was rewarding today for him today and congratulating him, of course, for being one of the (medalists), for working really, really, really hard for the medal.
“It’s really special to see some of these young guys come up and step up and, you know, inspire, inspire a lot of young boys out there.”
“This is my last year on the track,” Cheptegei told Fisher as they circled Stade de France. “Yeah, you got it next year. The (World) Championships, you have to be men.”