Yared Nuguse is concerned about the gap in his résumé. It’s just that becoming one of the fastest 1,500-meter runners in the world has disrupted the timeline he had planned for himself at age 12.
“I was going to go to university, and then go to dental school, and just be a great orthodontist,” he said, 24 hours after becoming the American national champion in the 1,500 meters in July. “Then running kind of comes along in high school and it’s like, ‘OK, it doesn’t interfere with my plan,’ and then in college it doesn’t interfere with my plan. And it’s just like, ‘Oh, you could go professional now.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that kind of interferes with my plan a little bit.’”
After much persuasion, Nuguse, 24, decided to take a detour. Dental school would always be an option, he thought.
In his first year as a professional runner, Nuguse — who was on the bowling team in high school, who has a turtle named Tyro after his favorite amino acid (Tyrosine), whose running mantra is “go out there and have fun,” who calls going to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour “forever a highlight” — has arrived here, at the world championships in Budapest, as a top contender for the gold in the 1,500 meters.
When Nuguse recounts all of this, he tends to giggle.
“I was never really the athletic type,” he said a day after becoming the national champion in the 1,500 meters in Eugene, Ore. “I still don’t really feel like the athletic type.”
His results say otherwise. In January, he set a new American record in the indoor 3,000 meters, running 7:28.23. He ran the second-fastest indoor mile in history in February, finishing the Millrose Games Wanamaker Mile in 3:47.38. In May, at a Diamond League meet in Rabat, he set a new personal best in the 1,500, running 3:33.02.
None of this would have happened if he hadn’t tried to beat the crowd at McDonald’s during high school gym class in his hometown of Louisville, Ky.
Students were being assessed on their mile times, and Nuguse, a self-proclaimed “big nerd,” wanted to get a good grade, of course. But after completing the race, the students were allowed to go to McDonald’s — and Nuguse did a quick calculation. Winning meant a good grade, plus, “I’ll eat there first.”
The high school track coach immediately noticed Nuguse’s potential. The coach was persuasive, and Nuguse decided to give the track team a chance to boost his college application.
Mike Kuntz, one of Nuguse’s high school coaches, remembers his first races well.
“You know Urkel?” Kuntz asked in a recent conversation in Budapest. He stood up to demonstrate. “Yared would run a few strides, and then push up his glasses. Run a few strides, then push up his glasses.”
“He’d run in one shoe more often than you’d think,” Kuntz added, explaining that one of Nuguse’s shoes would somehow slip off during track meets or get stuck in the mud during a cross-country race. “And then he’d win.”
Nuguse continued racing with the team, surprised by how much he enjoyed it. Teammates started calling him “the goose,” a play on his last name, and soon the phrase “the goose is loose” caught on. In his senior year, Nuguse won Kentucky state titles in the 800 meters, 1,600 meters, and 3,200 meters.
Running in high school was so much fun, he said, that he considered doing it in college when recruiters came knocking. By the winter of his freshman year at the University of Notre Dame, he had become one of the best milers in the country.
The word “fun” punctuates nearly every sentence Nuguse says when talking about the sport. If he’s not having fun, he’s describing something as “super fun,” “really fun,” or at the very least, “kind of fun.” He knows that this mindset is somewhat of a superpower in a high-pressure sport that often overwhelms even the strongest athletes.
“My mentality is so good because my whole being isn’t tied to running,” Nuguse said. “Running is fun and I love to do it, but I love to do it because it’s fun, not because I’m really good and I have to.
“It’s just something I really enjoy for now,” he added, “and when I’m done enjoying it, then I’ll be done.”
An hour before he was set to compete in the N.C.A.A. national championship in 2019, Nuguse sought refuge from the Texas heat in an air-conditioned car. He fell asleep. Matt Sparks, the director of track and field and cross-country at Notre Dame, had to wake him up in time for him to win the N.C.A.A. title in the 1,500 meters.
“He wasn’t sitting in the car listening to loud music,” Sparks said. “He fell asleep in the car getting ready for what most would say was the biggest race of his life.”
As a professional runner with the On Athletics Club, Nuguse lives and trains with Mario García Romo of Spain, his teammate and another 1,500-meter specialist. They couldn’t be more different, said Dathan Ritzenhein, the team’s coach. “Mario is a list maker; everything needs to be in order. If Yared knows what day of the week it is, that’s a good start.”
Nuguse is known to eat two Eggo waffles and “a ton” of syrup five minutes before leaving their apartment in the morning. If the frozen waffles were easier to transport, he would bring them to his international meets, Nuguse deadpanned.
But he doesn’t stress too much about pre-race fuel. “As long as there’s something in my belly, it’s fine,” he said. “What I eat really just determines if I throw up or if I don’t throw up.” He smiled, realizing he didn’t vomit after his last race. “I made a good choice yesterday.”
On Wednesday, Nuguse will have his first chance to bring home an international title. He qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 1,500 meters, but he was injured and couldn’t compete, and he didn’t qualify for last year’s world championships.
When asked about his race strategy for the final, which includes facing the dominant Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, Nuguse said he plans to “keep doing what I’m doing.”
Most importantly, he hopes to have — you guessed it — fun. He said he only plans on running professionally until 2028 or 2029, which he believes should give him enough time to see what he can accomplish in the sport. He still has six more years of schooling ahead of him — four years of dental school and two years specializing in orthodontics — and he’d like to get on with that.
Until then, the goose will stay loose. When Nuguse mentioned the Paris Olympics, he said it might align nicely with Swift’s Eras tour dates in Europe. That would be incredibly fun, he said. And after that, he can look forward to the Olympics on American soil.
“Winning in L.A. would be a dream come true,” he said. “But if I don’t, I’m not going to think, ‘Well, my career was a failure.’ My career is a failure if I don’t have fun.
“That’s why that’s really the ultimate goal,” he added. “The medals, all the great accolades and stuff, are just sprinkles on top.”