Bryce Hoppel

Today on the podcast, I am joined by newly minted American Record Holder Bryce Hoppel!

Bryce holds the American Record in the 800m, having run 1:41.67 in the Olympic final. 

Byrce is the 2024 World Indoor Championship Gold Medalist. He's also a 2xOlympian and 2xNCAA Champ where he had a 21 race win streak.

Bryce won the 2016 Texas 6A State Track & Field Championship with a time of 1:49.67, including an undefeated season in the 800 meters. 

He then went on to Kansas, where he was a five-time All-American, two-time National Champion, and four-time Big 12 Champion. In 2019, Hoppel completed a sweep of both the indoor and outdoor NCAA 800m titles, becoming the first male from the University of Kansas to win an NCAA title in the event. Hoppel's 21 race unbeaten streak began during the indoor season in 2019, lasting until the USATF Outdoor Championships on July 25.

Bryce competes professionally for Adidas and The Very Nice Track Club, based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

In today's conversation, Bryce takes me through his Olympic performance, where he ran an American Record, the state of the 800m as an event, doping in sport, his dominant years at Kansas, joining VNTC, and much more!

This one was a ton of fun and had a ton of wisdom in it. Do not miss this conversation!

Tap into the Bryce Hoppel Special. 

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• 00:00 Welcome and Olympic Excitement
• 01:08 Distance Running Predictions Overview
• 02:17 Women's 800m Predictions
• 05:02 Women's 1500m Predictions
• 07:30 Women's 5000m Predictions
• 09:49 Women's 10000m Predictions
• 12:58 Women's 3000m Steeplechase Predictions
• 15:48 Women's Marathon Predictions
• 19:37 Men's 800m Predictions
• 19:49 Sponsor Message and Ketone IQ
• 24:43 Analyzing the Men's 800m Final
• 25:37 Men's 1500m Predictions
• 28:05 Excitement for the Men's 1500m Final
• 30:17 Men's 5000m Predictions
• 35:06 Men's 10000m Predictions
• 38:02 Men's 3000m Steeplechase Predictions
• 40:53 Men's Marathon Predictions
• 45:17 Olympic Games Excitement and Other Sports

Last one, fast one?!

The final day of the Olympic Trials was one for the history books. In every. single. event. that took place on the tracks yesterday afternoon, the Olympic Trials meet record was broken. In multiple events, simply qualifying for Team USA meant you had to produce a performance that ranked in the U.S. top-10 of all time.

12.37 in the 100m hurdles, 3:56.75 in the women’s 1500m, and 1:44.12 in the men’s 800m were only good enough for fourth place. The mantra of “iron sharpens iron” normally applies to training groups, but it certainly also applies to American track and field right now. When being top 10 in the world is not a guarantee of being top 3 in the U.S., the choice is simple: you elevate your game or you go home.

The afternoon began with the 5000m final, where last year’s U.S. champ Abdi Nur and this year’s 10,000m champ Grant Fisher treated the fans to an epic duel over the final few laps. It took a sub-4 1600m to break the rest of the field, and in the final strides, Fisher was able to re-pass Nur and get his second title of the week, the first time he’s completed the 10/5 double. Behind them, it was a similar battle for third between collegians Parker Wolfe and Graham Blanks, and it’s still not clear whether Wolfe or Blanks will end up on Team USA. Wolfe needs a few scratches in the world rankings ahead of him, and Blanks has the auto standard.

In the men’s 800m, Bryce Hoppel won his sixth straight U.S. title (counting indoors), but he did it in the fastest time of his career, a 1:42.77. His training partner Hobbs Kessler snagged third and qualifies for both the 800m and 1500m, the first time an American man has done that since 1976. In the women’s 100m hurdles, you could throw a blanket over the whole field with two hurdles remaining, but it was Masai Russell who closed the best and clocked a 12.25, the good for #4 on the world all-time list.

Rai Benjamin did Rai Benjamin things in the men’s 400m hurdles, cruising to a 46.47 world lead and meet record well ahead of the competition. The women’s 1500m was an absolute battle — more on that below. And then we closed the weekend with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

McLaughlin-Levrone is used to being the star of the show, and honestly her biggest competition is usually the shadow of her past self. In the 400m hurdles final she had the benefit of a fast-starting Anna Cockrell on her outside, who stayed even with the Olympic champ for the first three hurdles and kept the pressure on early. But the real difference was that, coming around the final turn, McLaughlin-Levrone didn’t shut it down like she normally does through the rounds, instead powering down the homestretch to an incredible new world record 50.65.

For those keeping score at home, that’s the fifth time McLaughlin-Levrone has lowered the world record. When she started, the world record she was breaking was Dalilah Muhammad’s 52.16 from 2019, and now it’s an incredible 1.51 seconds faster.

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The U.S. Olympic Trials are back and better than ever in the second half of the 8-day program, with incredible drama, upsets, and underdog stories across the board.

The race of the day (and perhaps the week?) was the women’s steeplechase, where a fast early pace and a topsy-turvy final lap ended with a whole slew of personal bests and rewriting of the record books. Tokyo Olympian Val Constien ended up on top thanks to a phenomenal final 400m, running 9:03.22 to PR by 11 seconds and land at #3 on the U.S. all-time list. Constien had ACL surgery last year and after a long road back is better than ever.

We got our first peeks at the 400m hurdles crew, and the main takeaway from the first round is that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Rai Benjamin are looking like world beaters out for an easy jog. McLaughlin-Levrone in particular shut it down entirely over the final two laps and still ran 53.07, the third-fastest performance in the world this year behind her own season’s best and Femke Bol’s world lead.

Speaking of first looks, Erriyon Knighton doesn’t seem to have missed a step as he ran his first 200m in four months, cruising through the first round with a 20.15 just behind Noah Lyles’s 20.10 in an earlier heat. And a stacked final is set for the 5000m, where reigning U.S. champ Abdi Nur takes on two of the three members of Team USA in the 10,000m, the 1500m Trials champ, and two NCAA champs.

The middle-distance rounds will continue to get more and more cutthroat, with the women’s 1500m featuring Elle St. Pierre, Heather MacLean, Cory McGee, Emily MacKay, Elise Cranny, Nikki Hiltz, Sinclaire Johnson, and more heading to the semis and Olympians Bryce Hoppel and Clayton Murphy looking ready to once again do battle in the 800m.

“When I was running the race, I really didn’t have a time in mind. I knew when I crossed that line that it was going to be a decent time…When I looked at the time, that was not what I was expecting to see there. That was pretty surreal. I’m super, super grateful.”

Texas A&M junior Sam Whitmarsh popped onto our radar with a 1:44.46 at LSU’s Battle on the Bayou meet on March 30th, which moved him to No. 7 on the all-time collegiate list. 

When we put the call out on the CITIUS MAG team for bold predictions for the 2024 season, Kyle Merber predicted that Whitmarsh would make the U.S. Olympic 800m team. Only U.S. champion and World Indoor champion Bryce Hoppel and 2023 NCAA champion Will Sumner ran faster than 1:44.46.

The reason that people may not be as familiar with Whitmarsh is that his 2022 season was cut short as a freshman because he was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome –  a heart condition that leads to periods of rapid heart rate. In 2023, he was the SEC Championship runner-up and then only reached the NCAA West Regional in the 800m. This past indoor season, he missed qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships by 0.01 sec.

It feels like at every U.S. Olympic Trials or U.S. Championships there’s a rising star out of the NCAA who can shake things up. Whitmarsh is looking like he could be that guy in 2024.

Host: Chris Chavez | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@chris_j_chavez on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host: Sam Whitmarsh | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@samwhitmarsh on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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"I never had any problems with the workouts, but for me personally, I think it started to affect my mental and social side to where my relationship with running wasn't really happy. There was almost a nonexistent excitement for workouts and I was just kind of going through the monotony, but not enjoying it. And so changing it up, when you need excitement to love running again – being with VNTC guys lit that spark for me again. I am getting better at physical training and it's exciting with Hobbs. That guy's amazing and I just needed a new change of scenery."

The kid from Midland, Texas went to the University of Kansas to chase some big dreams and now Bryce Hoppel is a World Indoor Champion. It was won with experience as much as it was with fitness. It happens in the blink of an eye that the rookie becomes the veteran, but now Hoppel is in the prime years of his career. I hadn’t yet given my congratulations to him so I reached out to hear how everything was being digested since Glasgow.

Host: Kyle Merber | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@kylemerber on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Guest: Bryce Hoppel | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@brycehoppel on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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CITIUS MAG's Anderson Emerole reports from Glasgow, Scotland with a recap of Day 3 of the World Indoor Championships.

– Team USA earned FOUR medals in the 1500m as New Zealand's George Beamish and Ethiopia's Freweyni Hailu came away with victories but Nikki Hiltz, Emily Mackay, Cole Hocker and Hobbs Kessler all came away with medals.

– Bryce Hoppel clocked a world-leading 1:44.92 to improve upon his bronze medal from 2022 to win gold in the 800m final. Ethiopia's Tsige Duguma claimed gold in the 800 – just ahead of Team GB's Jemma Reekie.

– Tara Davis-Woodhall and Monae Nichols went 1-2 in the women's long jump.

– Bahamian Devynne Charlton broke her own 60m hurdles world record to claim her country's first-ever gold medal in the 800m

– There was controversy over Noah Lyles being named to the 4x400m relay team and then they came away with a silver medal as Belgium's Alexander Doom kicked down Team USA in the closing meters. Lyles split 45.68, which was the third-fastest of the American team.

– Mondo Duplantis claimed yet another gold in the men's pole vault.

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🔜 We'll be sharing Anderson's daily recaps and dispatches from Scotland on the ⁠⁠⁠CITIUS MAG Podcast feed⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠YouTube channel⁠⁠⁠.

Keep tabs on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel as we have tons of interviews from the mixed zone there. We'll be sharing live updates on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter/X⁠⁠⁠; ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠ all throughout the weekend.

On this week’s show, we had some fast times thrown down in Lievin, France where we saw several world-leading performances and a world record. We’re going to spend much of our time previewing the USATF Indoor Championships and the World Cross Country Championships this weekend.

Lievin World Indoor Tour: Lamecha Girma broke the indoor 3000m record with a 7:23.81; Meet records fell at the hands of Karsten Warholm, Keely Hodgkinson and Femke Bol. Jakob Ingebrigtsen is paying attention to the American stars now but says, 'I'm still the best.'

USATF Indoor Championships: Many of the top stars are absent from this meet since there is no World Indoor Championships this year. Noah Lyles is still the premier star showing up for the men's 60m. Major props to the likes of Aleia Hobbs, Anna Hall, Whittni Morgan, Cole Hocker, Clayton Murphy, Bryce Hoppel and others for contesting the meet.

World Cross Country Championships: The race will be held in Mount Panorama Circuit in Australia. If you want to watch, tune in on Friday, Feb. 17, at 11:30 p.m. ET on Peacock. It’s a 2K loop. People will be running through a vineyard at times. Possibly some kangaroo sightings. Very hot conditions. Should be spicy with Joshua Cheptegei, Selemon Barega, Letesenbet Gidey and Francine Niyonsaba among the stars competing.

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