Why American record holder Grant Fisher is not happy with his 2024 season despite fishing two Olympics medals

American long distance great Grant Fisher has expressed regrets from his 2024 season even though he recorded his best-ever performance by clinching two Olympics medals.

American long distance runner Grant Fisher is coming off an impressive 2024 season that saw him clinch two bronze medals in 5,000m and 10,000m at the Paris Olympics.

Fisher went one better this year after coming so close in the last two years. He missed the 5,000m podium by 0.17 seconds at the 2022 World Championships then failed to qualify to the US 10,000m team by one second, and withdrew from 5000m with an injury ahead of the 2023 Worlds.

This year, however, Fisher decided to leave Nike Bowerman TC and went back to where it all started, opting to work with Mike Scannell, a longtime family friend who ran with his father Dan.

Scannell knows Fisher very well, having worked with him during a prep career which saw him win a couple of Foot Locker national cross-country titles before becoming the seventh US high schooler to break 4:00.

“When I sat down with Mike, there was one goal for the whole season: it was the podium in Paris. And there were a lot of smaller goals along the way. One was the indoor season and trying to get an American Record, to really test to see if our new system had been working,” Fisher told Track and Field News.

“Mike had never trained someone at my caliber before and I wanted to tweak a few things in training, so it was unproven.

“So, the winter season was proof of concept [though he missed former training mate Woody Kincaid’s indoor 5000 AR by just 0.23 with his 12:51.84]. Then the next goal was to make the team and win the USAs and we got that done. Then the final goal was getting on the podium and we got that done too. I hit all the goals so it was about as good as it could have gone… I think we optimized pretty much everything we could,” Fisher added of his season’s targets.

Scannell is still pinching himself that he masterminded a double Olympics bronze medals without necessarily being what would be termed an elite coach.

“Fun is a complete understatement. He’s more to me than just another kid to coach. It’s a special relationship that I have with Grant and I feel his success at a deeper level,” Scannell told the outlet, revealing what went through his mind after the 5,000m final.

“All by myself in the hotel room at 5am after going out and all that, and the thing that went through my mind, honestly, was ‘Holy crap. It worked.’ I mean, we laid out all this stuff and said, ‘You know, this should work.’ Holy cow, what are the chances?”

However, despite breaking his glass ceiling, Fisher is still not satisfied.

“The only thing that could have gone better this year is if I had a silver or gold medal right now, and those are really hard to get,” said Fisher.

“I don’t want to get too greedy but there’s little things we’re going to tweak this coming year, just slight differences in training. The changes are small at this point, though. I really like the system and I’m confident that it will work again next year. Maybe the little tweaks will get me a little higher on the podium.”

Fisher has the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo to get that silver or gold medal that he so yearns for now.