Yared Nuguse couldn’t run.
Minutes before his Olympic 1,500-meter preliminary at the 2021 Tokyo Games, Nuguse couldn’t complete a simple warm-up stride. A quadricep he’d strained during a workout after arriving in Japan flared up as he completed preparations outside the stadium. There was no chance he’d finish the race.
What should have been a promising Olympic debut for the then-fourth-year Notre Dame runner evaporated into crushing disappointment.
For a different athlete, it might have been an inflection point, a regret, a story to tell years later, the closest he ever came to Olympic glory. But Nuguse ’21, ’22M.S., has never been like other athletes. He’s been called many things. A low-key superstar. A laid-back champion. The accidental miler.
But he prefers “future orthodontist.”
Ever since high school he’s wanted to attend dental school and become an orthodontist. That’s still his goal. Becoming the fastest miler in American history and the most decorated distance runner ever to graduate from Notre Dame is something that happened along the way.
Nuguse grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, the fourth of six children born to parents who had emigrated to the United States from the Tigray region of Ethiopia. As a freshman at duPont Manual High, he was mostly into math and science but believed extracurriculars would help with college applications.
So, he joined the bowling team.
“It wasn’t really a sport,” Nuguse says, laughing, “but it was, like, a sport.”
But before his bowling dreams could take flight, the ninth grader’s smooth stride was noticed by a gym teacher, and the school’s track coach convinced Nuguse to give running a try. His career began modestly enough — raw talent, no racing savvy — but by senior year he was stacking up state championships. His ascension in the sport was marked as much by his easygoing disposition as his fierce competitiveness.
At the state track meet his senior year he claimed four titles in a single day. Between races he wore a T-shirt that read “Golden Goose,” a nod to the pronunciation of his last name: nuh-goose.
The nickname followed him to Notre Dame, along with a laid-back persona that initially left coaches scratching their heads. Matt Sparks, Notre Dame’s Hatherly-Piane director of track & field and cross-country, remembers his initial doubts about the newcomer’s demeanor.
“The thing that stood out was how passive he was at everything,” Sparks says. “At the time, you wondered, ‘Is this kid ever going to figure it out?’ because you thought you were seeing a lackadaisical attitude.”
In the frequently type-A world of collegiate distance running, Nuguse would train and compete hard but seemed to transcend pressure. Part of that detachment came from a self-professed ignorance of the sport — he’d never actually followed it. It meant he was unburdened by history. It’s hard to feel the pressure of being “the next Jim Ryun” if you’ve never heard of Jim Ryun.
That lack of awareness, paired with Nuguse’s persistent dental dreams and a natural tendency to remain, as he says, “chill and low-stress,” means he has conspicuously avoided latching his entire identity to running.
“I didn’t grow up being like, ‘I’m gonna be a track star and go to the Olympics,’” Nuguse says. “It was just something that happened. I had all these things I wanted to do for so long, namely become an orthodontist, so no matter how well I do at running, at the end of the day I turn back to that.”
When Nuguse competed at the 2019 NCAA outdoor championships, Sparks had a front-row seat — literally — to the Fighting Irish harrier’s imperturbable nature.
The meet was in Austin, Texas, contested under sweltering, 100-degree conditions. Seeking to escape the heat before his 1,500-meter final, Nuguse and his coaches retreated to an air-conditioned rental car. Sparks and then-assistant coach Sean Carlson were up front, Nuguse stretched out in the back. As the start time drew near, Carlson called over the seat to let his young charge know it was time to warm up. Receiving no answer, the two coaches glanced back to see why Nuguse was so quiet.
“He’s asleep in the back seat,” Sparks recalls. “It’s an hour before the race; most kids are so jacked they can’t calm down, and he’s back there sleeping. Like, I don’t need to stress out too much about this.”
Nuguse won that race by three-thousandths of a second, kicking to victory in the final stride.
“There’s never a moment that’s too big for him,” Sparks marvels. “When he arrived on campus we thought it might be his flaw, that he was too relaxed about everything. It turns out it was really his superpower.”
That superpower has taken Nuguse to astonishing heights. He now runs professionally for the On Athletics Club, training in Boulder, Colorado, alongside fellow Irish standouts Dylan Jacobs ’22 and Olivia Markezich ’23, ’24M.S.
At the 2023 Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, Nuguse shattered a 16-year-old American record in the mile, trailing Norwegian star Jakob Ingebrigtsen to a jaw-dropping 3:43.97 clocking that remains the fourth-fastest performance in history.
At the Millrose Games in 2025, Nuguse set a world record for the indoor mile, running 3:46.63 to secure his third-straight title in the prestigious Wanamaker Mile. Although the record didn’t last long — Ingebrigtsen broke it in France five days later — Nuguse’s mark remains the fastest ever by an American indoors.
Between those achievements, Nuguse earned another shot at Olympic glory at the 2024 Paris Games, qualifying for the 1,500 he was denied in 2021.
The preliminary heats were, by his own admission, shaky, but Nuguse locked in for the final. Ingebrigtsen led much of the race, but when the Norwegian faltered in the homestretch, Nuguse charged past him into the bronze position. Fellow American Cole Hocker outkicked Great Britain’s Josh Kerr for gold, marking the first time in 112 years that the United States won two medals in the 1,500 at the same Olympics.
The moment was equal parts cathartic and redemptive for Nuguse.
“After not being able to race in Tokyo,” he says, “I came back thinking, ‘All right, now I’m actually good. I need to show out here and do well.’ Getting bronze in a field that stacked — it was everything I wanted out of a track meet. Running fast, fighting for the win on a stage that everyone was watching.”
He’s still, in many respects, the reluctant star. The low-key miler. The chill champion.
But also, now, an Olympic medalist.
According to Sparks, you would never know it. When Nuguse returns to campus and runs with the Irish, as he does at least once a year, he’s still very much the same guy. Still the kid dozing in the back of the rental car.
“The current guys will return from running with him, and they all say the same thing: ‘He just seems like a regular dude.’”
A regular dude — and future orthodontist — who happens to be one of the most accomplished milers in U.S. history.
David Devine lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.