PARIS – As Grant Fisher lined up for the Olympic Games 10,000 meter final in Tokyo, 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 27:11m 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 native, 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, that 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, has 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 less than a second separated the first six finishers at the end. 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 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 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 10,000m race – and I think it was a big piece.
“Pretty much everyone that medals in the 10,000 meters all year lives 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 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 in 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.
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“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.”
