Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Ja’Kobe Tharp clocked 12.75sec to smash the 110m hurdles world record during heats at the NCAA collegiate athletics championships in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday. Tharp wiped out the long-standing previous record of 12.80sec set by fellow American Aries Merritt in Brussels on September 7, 2012. The performance, run with a legal tailwind of one meter per second, also shattered Grant Holloway’s NCAA collegiate record of 12.98sec set in 2019.
The 20-year-old Auburn University standout came into the meeting with a personal best of 13.01sec. He took more than a quarter of a second off that mark. “I knew I had that in my legs,” Tharp told reporters. “But it wasn’t on my bingo card before this meet, not at all.” Tharp said he felt like he was “going pretty fast”.
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“The last three hurdles were kind of iffy,” he said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m coming up kind of fast’. I thought maybe 12.97 or 12.98 and match the (NCAA) speed record. But to see that … I’m speechless, seriously.”
While he did not have a world record in mind, Tharp said he “really wanted to make a statement”. Having achieved that, he can now focus on Friday’s final, in which he’ll try to become the first athlete since Olympic champion Holloway in 2019 to win a second straight NCAA crown in the event. “I’m trying to focus on what’s here in front of me,” he said. “I’ve still got to finish it in two days, so I’m still focused on that.”
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