CNN
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For a six-day period, Grant Fisher felt like everything he touched would turn to gold.
The American distance runner had never held a world record at the start of the year, but over the course of back-to-back races in February, he broke two in the space of a week: first in the indoor 3,000 meters, then the indoor 5,000 meters.
Looking back, Fisher calls them both “super, super rare” moments when all the factors needed to break a record lined up in his favor. For a brief time in New York and then in Boston, he felt invincible.
Holding off the challenge of compatriot Cole Hocker at The Millrose Games on February 8, Fisher ran 7:22.91 for the 3,000m – almost a second faster than Ethiopian Lamecha Girma’s mark set two years ago – before running a solo 12:44.09 in the 5,000m on Valentine’s Day to take the record from another Ethiopian – the legendary Kenenisa Bekele.
Even now, it still hasn’t sunk in.
“The times don’t seem real to me – 12:44 doesn’t sound like a 5k time, and 7:22 doesn’t sound like a 3k time,” Fisher tells CNN Sports. “But those are attached to my name forever.”
Perhaps most impressive was that Fisher ran both the world records in entirely different circumstances. In New York, he was pushed right to the line by Hocker, only moving past the Olympic 1,500m champion on the final straight.
“We just kept winding it up and winding it up, and it ended up that I needed a world record to beat Cole that day, which is kind of crazy,” says Fisher, who beamed through exhaustion after crossing the finish line.
Then in Boston, the 27-year-old was essentially on his own for half of the race, weaving through slower runners on the closing laps. By that point, he didn’t need to look at the clock to know that he was edging closer to a world record; the roar of the crowd told him as much.
With no competition near him, Fisher could only tell himself to push harder and harder –arguably a bigger mental challenge than having a rival to race against.
“It was just me grinding against me,” he says, “a different mindset when there’s no carrot in front of you.
Fisher placed himself among the world’s top distance runners by winning Olympic bronze medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m last year, but the two records have propelled his career to even greater heights.
He is set to run in the inaugural Grand Slam Track meet in Jamaica on Friday – a new league spearheaded by American legend Michael Johnson which features some of the world’s best sprint and endurance athletes.
The goal for the coming weeks, when Fisher will race eight times across Grand Slam Track’s four events, is to win each time he steps onto the track.
“There are two kind of big sides to the sport,” says Fisher. “One is see how fast you can go, and one is can you beat everybody else in the world? I know I can go fast, so the next piece is to see if I can beat everybody else out there.”
Fisher is one of 48 “racers” contracted to compete in Grand Slam Track, receiving a base salary and up to $100,000 in prize money should he win an event.
He’ll face strong competition from Kenyan Ronald Kwemoi, who won 5,000m silver ahead of Fisher at the Olympics, but not Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the winner of that race in Paris who hasn’t signed up for the new series.
However, Fisher feels confident that Grand Slam Track will allow the fastest runners to race against each other more regularly, as well as being a way to crown the world’s best athletes in a season-long competition outside of the Olympics and World Athletics Championships.
“I know I’m world class,” he says. “I have been really close to being the best in the world before, but I never really have had that title, so I’m going for the win every single time. I think all eight people in these fields are going to say that same thing – that’s the reason to show up to these things is to win.”
Up until last year, Fisher was in danger of becoming a nearly-man at major races, finishing fourth and sixth at the world championships in 2022 and fifth and ninth at the Olympics the year before.
But a coaching change at the start of last year shifted the trajectory of his career. Fisher left the Bowerman Track Club in Oregon at the end of 2023 and relocated to Park City, Utah to be trained by his high school coach Mike Scannell.
He says that the coaching change, as well as living and training at altitude, has over time been “massive” for his development, carrying him to world records and Olympic medals. In doing so, Fisher has established himself as a core part of the US’ flourishing crop of male middle- and long-distance runners, alongside Hocker and 1,500m bronze medalist Yared Nuguse.
“American distance running is at an all-time high right now, I think,” says Fisher, pointing to Matt Centrowitz’s 1,500m Olympic gold in Rio as a moment that inspired his generation.
“When I was younger, the narrative was kind of that Americans couldn’t really compete with the rest of the world, and specifically the really strong East African nations in distance running.
“(Centrowitz’s) performance there, Galen Rupp’s performance in 2016 as well, those I think unlocked the minds of a lot of younger athletes … People go into races now, and Americans aren’t afraid.”
If self-belief is a central ingredient to success, then Fisher is sure to only have bigger and better things on the horizon. Off the back of his world records, he’s still wrapping his head around how fast he managed to run twice in the space of six days, still adjusting to his name being mentioned alongside some of the greats of the sport.
As the year progresses, that will likely be happening with more and more regularity – especially if Fisher is able to maintain the form of his life.
