Park City runner claims Bronze in 10,000 meters, says Utah training helped
Aug 2, 2024, 7:46 PM | Updated: 8:05 pm
PARIS — Grant Fisher, who moved to Utah to assist with his training, became just the fourth American man to medal in the 10,000 meters Olympic run Friday and only the second in the last 60 years. He credited the move with helping with his historic finish.
He was about as happy as an athlete can get when he spoke with KSL TV’s Alex Cabrero just after the race, but he still has to rest and refocus because he has another distance race, the 5,000 meter, next week.
“It’s going to hard to recover and reset,” Fisher said. “I’m on a big high right now. I mean, it really doesn’t get too much better than this. The only thing that you can do better is get, you know, silver or gold and there’s only two guys in the world that get that every four years, so this is something I won’t forget.”
Fisher credited part of his success to moving to Utah in order to train with the Run Elite program. It’s a relatively new program in Utah for high-performance runners.
Fisher also competed in the Tokyo Olympics but didn’t have the success he enjoyed in Paris. The Utah program for elite runners was started a few years ago by Utah Olympian marathoner Jared Ward. He wanted a team to attract and retain high-performance runners in Utah. Fisher decided to do it and is now an Olympic medalist.
Elite Running Program credited for producing Utah Olympians competing in 2024 Paris Games
“I moved to Utah on my own. I didn’t really know anybody,” Fisher said. “All I had was my coach… I didn’t know who I was going to train with, I didn’t know who I was going to hang out with, I didn’t know what community I was going to be part of and you know a lot of people in Utah kind of adopted me as their own.
Grant Fisher becomes the fourth American man to win a medal in the 10,000m, and the second in the last 60 years. 👏 #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/hfaFmej5f9
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) August 3, 2024
“It’s a fantastic place to train, a fantastic place to live, and the community is awesome. I moved there hoping that would be one piece of the puzzle that got me on the podium, and it was.”
Next week Fisher has a chance to bring the United State track and field team another medal, but another one for Utah as well.
36 athletes with ties to Utah will take part in Paris Olympics
Larry D. Curtis contributed to this report.
