Donavan Brazier went nearly three years away from racing, spending more time on Planet Fitness ellipticals than in track spikes.
For even longer, Josh Hoey was in his own running wilderness: six different coaches since turning pro out of high school in 2018.
Their stories collide in the men’s 800m, arguably the most compelling event at this week’s Toyota USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
The meet starts Thursday, with the 800m final on Sunday (live on Peacock).
National champions and world championships team members will be determined in Eugene, Oregon.
Donavan Brazier’s injury history and return to 800m
The top three in most events, including the men’s 800m, likely make the team for September’s World Championships in Tokyo.
The three fastest two-lappers in American history are entered: Bryce Hoppel (fourth at the 2024 Olympics), Hoey (fourth at the 2024 Olympic Trials, missing the team by one spot) and Brazier, the only American to win a world title in the event.
But that crown came way back in 2019. Six years was a generation ago in the men’s 800m, and in Brazier’s life.
After COVID-19 postponed the Tokyo Olympics by one year, Brazier broke the American indoor record for a third time in February 2021.
But that spring something didn’t feel right in his left ankle. Brazier, determined to race through it in an Olympic year, put off an MRI.
At the trials for Tokyo, he won his first-round heat, placed second in his semifinal and was in second place in the final with 200 meters to go, having won all of his meets since May 2019.
He began looking down at his legs every handful of strides. Six men passed him. He faded to last place (2.32 seconds behind the field). He limped after finishing.
He alluded to an injury minutes afterward in a virtual mixed zone — “some things bugging me, but there’s things that champions overcome, and I couldn’t overcome them,” he said.
Two or three days later, a photo on fellow runner Craig Engels’ Instagram story showed Brazier in the background wearing a protective boot and holding crutches.
The post-trials MRI had revealed a fracture in the ankle. He underwent surgery and returned for the early 2022 indoor season.
But then Brazier needed another surgery — this time on his right foot to repair Haglund’s deformity, a bony growth on the heel where the Achilles’ tendon attaches.
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He underwent three total procedures for Haglund’s between July 2022 and late 2023. He didn’t race in 2023 or 2024.
“Single most difficult time?” Brazier asked, repeating an interview question. “I think it’s just the cumulativeness of the unknown, not knowing if you’re going to come back or not. In my brain, I always thought I was going to come back, but there definitely was lingering things like, if I did retire, the sport’s moved on without me.”
Brazier tried to keep running, but only in what he called “little stints” and not enough to merit counting his weekly mileage.
When his foot couldn’t take the pounding, Brazier biked, swam and mounted an arc machine to stay in shape. He became a Planet Fitness member to use gyms in his native Michigan and in Florida, where his fiancée, Ally Watt, plays for the Orlando Pride.
“I tried to almost trick myself into not missing it (track), you know what I mean?” Brazier said. “But then once you come back, you kind of realize how much you did miss it.”
He came back this spring. Brazier flew to Flagstaff, Arizona, a runners’ hub due to its elevation, and trained under coach Mike Smith.
By June, having been relatively pain-free for three months, Brazier was ready to race for the first time since July 2022.
His return meet: the Toad Fest in Brentwood, Tennessee. Brazier called it nostalgic.
He boarded an airplane not to see a doctor or visit a friend, but to compete. He reacted to a starting gun for the first time in years. He won — in 1:44.70, a time that would have made the 2024 Olympic Trials final.
“A lot of it felt natural, kind of like the good old times a little bit,” he said.
The first-place prize was a small statue of a toad sitting on a mushroom. It came from a Wal-Mart. Brazier was told he didn’t have to keep it, but he insisted on bringing it home.
“It was one of the cooler trophies I’ve gotten,” he said. “It’s one of the most meaningful ones, too.”
From there, Brazier went faster on June 15 (1:43.81) and July 19 (1:43.08).
He goes into nationals ranked third in the U.S. in 2025 by best time behind Hoey and Hoppel. If he’s top three on Sunday, he makes the world team.
“I was just trying to (qualify to race at) USAs,” he said, “but now I feel competitive enough to kind of reach out there and say I would like to try to qualify for teams. Obviously, I know the 800m is no slouch of an event right now.”
Josh Hoey breaks through in 800m in 7th year as pro
Back in 2018, Hoey turned pro out of high school. He was the second male distance runner to do so after Drew Hunter in 2016, according to track media.
Hoey ran at outdoor U.S. trials meets in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and never made it out of the first round.
He had no success with coaches, either, going through five over five years. There were injuries, disagreements on training philosophies and little improvement on his best times as a high schooler outside Philadelphia.
“I’ve had a lot of previous coaches and other people in the community that have said, ‘He’s done. He was good in high school, but he’s kind of cooked,’” he said on the Running Effect podcast.
By late 2023, Hoey stared at the last year of his Adidas contract in 2024 and, possibly, his last year as a professional runner.
Hoey trained in the morning on a track built during the pandemic on an old equestrian field at his family’s farm. Then he dressed up to intern during the day with his dad’s investment firm.
“It had seemed to me (in fall 2023) that I’d missed my window of opportunity, and the past five years of many mistakes and disappointments had run their course,” Hoey once posted on social media. “Despite this, I continued to train because it’s what I’m best at and what I know.”
For his last hurrah, Hoey decided to come up with his own training plan. Then fellow 800m runner and family friend Will Sumner made a suggestion for coach No. 6: his own coach, Australia-based Justin Rinaldi.
Hoey was reluctant. He did his mom a favor and made the call.
“A lot of the ideas that I had about training, that I was going to try and implement for myself, (Rinaldi) elaborated in much better detail,” he told Citius Mag.
Hoey and Rinaldi started a remote working relationship in late 2023.
At the 2024 Olympic Trials, Hoey finished fourth — one spot off the team, by 15 hundredths. Two hours later, he laughed about a placement that many would cry over.
“It felt so ironic, to have come that far and then to get that close, it was ridiculous,” he said of recording a personal best by 1.23 seconds. “I would say it was a really motivating experience, because going into that, there were still a lot of questions about if I was able to compete nationally and especially outdoors. That really kind of confirmed our talent level.”
Hoey re-signed with Adidas through 2028.
After the season, he spent fall 2024 in Flagstaff, altitude training he now credits for success so far in 2025: the world’s second-fastest indoor 800m in history in February and the world indoor title in March.
Team USA’s Hoey captures men’s 800m gold
Josh Hoey of the United States does just enough to win gold in the men’s 800m, securing his first global championship at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China.
In the spring outdoor season, he recovered from norovirus to lower his outdoor personal best twice more.
His 1:42.01 in Monaco on July 11 is the second-fastest time in U.S. history behind Hoppel’s 1:41.67 from the Paris Olympics. It also makes him the world’s second-fastest performer in 2025 behind Kenyan Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the Olympic champion.
“I definitely don’t think that we’ve hit our goals in the 800m this year,” Hoey said, adding he’s eyeing a world outdoor championships medal.
Hoey first met Brazier in 2018, after he turned pro and signed with the same agency.
This week, they could line up in the same outdoor race for the first time since the 2019 USATF Championships — when Brazier was the soon-to-be world champion and Hoey was trying to find his footing as a teenage pro.
“I don’t want to speak for Donovan’s experience, but I definitely understand what it’s like to feel lost and kind of ostracized from competition, and I understand how humbled and focused that can make you,” Hoey said.
Brazier drifted from the sport during his years away. He said he felt no animosity or bitterness, but that he didn’t want to be too involved in case his body wouldn’t let him return to this level.
“It obviously kills me, knowing that I haven’t even made an Olympic team up to this point in my career,” he told faster. “I think that’s kind of what keeps me up really at night. … If I had made an Olympic team at this point, I might have not even tried to come back. I definitely have certain goals and aspirations I still want to hit, but number one is really just trying to be an Olympian.”
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