THE TRACK WORLD is still trying to make sense of the USATF men’s 800 final and the 2nd-place finish of 16-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus. It seems plausible that the runner-up has generated more ink than the winner of the race, an idea all the more wild since the winner himself is such a great story.
The fascination with Lutkenhaus, to be sure, takes nothing away from Donavan Brazier and his compelling comeback. Instead, it has us grappling with perspective as if we were struggling on a slope where history has given us too few handholds.
Has anything like this ever happened before? Looking at the men’s middle distances, not really. In ’64, Jim Ryun, then beginning his senior year in high school, took 3rd in the Olympic Trials 1500 in 3:41.9, making the team for the first Tokyo Olympics. He was nearly 17½ then. He had already clocked 3:39.0 at a time when the World Record was 3:35.6.
Lutkenhaus will turn 17 in December. And his time of 1:42.27, a High School Record, is only 1.36 away from David Rudisha’s WR, at a time when the sport is far more developed and the competition much deeper.
Making sense of that performance and figuring out what to do next is what Lutkenhaus is working on now. When we talked to him a few months ago, the conversation turned on whether he had a chance to break Michael Granville’s HSR of 1:46.45, which had been set in ’96.
“Everybody’s chasing times now,” Lutkenhaus said. “I’m chasing times, but you just never know. I mean, 1:46, that’s pretty dang quick.”
He made the HSR his own with a 1:46.26 at the Brooks PR meet. Two weeks later at Nike Nationals, he improved it to 1:45.45.
That he survived the first round at the USATF Champs was no surprise. That 1:47.23 seemed no great stretch. That he qualified from his semi after a near-fall and a stirring come-from-behind sprint to clock 1:45.57 seemed astounding. In the moments before the final, I said to my editor that we might be on the brink of seeing the first prep 1:44. “Maybe.” We talked about whether a kid that young, that inexperienced, would have much left after his crazy semi the day before.
Then the final. To be honest, we discounted him as he was still so far back with 200 left. Then, in between shouting about Brazier, I saw Lutkenhaus flying around the curve. “Lutkenhaus is coming!” I remember saying. Everyone knows the rest.
“Always confident that I can run the last 200 against anybody,” Lutkenhaus said later. “Again, of course, going out there against the world’s best… I always think I can, but you just never know. Today was one of those days where everything lined up perfectly.”
Only one teen has ever run faster, Nijel Amos of Botswana, who holds the World Junior Record of 1:41.73, when he got silver behind Rudisha’s WR. He was 18 when he ran that (his doping DQ came 10 years later).
“I don’t know if there’s words for it right now, but just to make the team running that fast at this young, it’s special,” said Lutkenhaus. “I knew I could PR, I knew I could run faster than 1:45, but actually going out there and doing it was definitely a shock.
“It’s still crazy to believe I ran 1:42, so we’ll see in a few weeks, I guess, in Tokyo.”
Forget fall cross country. The World Championships are now the focus for Lutkenhaus and coach Chris Capeau. “I didn’t think I’d be going to Worlds, so getting the opportunity, I’m excited for it.”
Lutkenhaus said he and his coach had no splits in mind for Eugene; instead they were focused on position. The same game plan may be in play in Tokyo. “Sitting in that 5-6 spot and then just moving with 200, 250 to go is really the thing we talked about with my coach and just seeing what I can do over that final 200m… Knowing if I went out maybe a little too fast, I might not have been able to close as well.”
Facing a media (and social media) barrage, Lutkenhaus has to keep the focus on Tokyo. Already he’s being asked about his LA ’28 game plan, to which he said, “I know it’s still 3 years away, so just kind of taking it day-by-day. Obviously trying to run as fast as possible up to 2028, but just kind of focusing on the moment right now.”
And then there’s the going-pro question. Not a common one for prep sophs, but 1:42 does get people talking. “Staying in high school is definitely the main thing,” he said. “Obviously, as soon as you turn that decision to go pro, you can’t go back. You can’t go back to college. You can’t go back to high school. I think that’s a big decision.”
