GOING FOR THE gold is a careworn though irresistible meme wafting so ever-present in the atmosphere around an Olympic Games that sometimes it’s easy to underplay startling performances that earn medals of other colors or places a few notches lower in the results. This wasn’t the case for any U.S. fan who watched Kenneth Rooks’ bold last-lap surge in the men’s steeple.
Rooks, a 24-year-old BYU alum and native of Walla Walla, Washington, passed 7 men in the straight before the bell, broke from the field, built a brief lead of 5m on the last backstretch and only gave 1st up to defending champion Soufiane El Bakkali with 100 to go. He held on for silver in 8:06.41, an 8.67 improvement of his best that elevated him to No. 2 all-time U.S. performer.
With medal around his neck, and kitted out in the Team USA gear he wore that morning as he ran around to watch training mates Conner Mantz and Clayton Young race to 8th and 9th in the marathon, Rooks joined T&FN’s Olympic Tour luncheon at Aéro-Club de France. Accompanied by wife Taylor, his parents and in-laws, Rooks from the flying club stage entertained luncheon guests with his account of the race that raised him in his first Olympic final to silver medalist status.
T&FN Editor Sieg Lindstrom conducted the interview, portions of which appear below, lightly edited for context and clarity.
SL: I’d like to introduce Kenneth Rooks [avalanche of applause], who earned perhaps the most unexpected silver medal of the Games. But perhaps that’s not the way you look at it?
Rooks: Well, yeah, I would describe it as unexpected. I mean, my coach, Ed Eyestone, definitely believed in me and I had a little bit of belief for myself — because of how well I can close the race and how well I closed at USA’s that if I was in position, I would have a chance at medaling maybe. So I was like, “OK, that might be a possibility.”
But going into the race, I just wanted to execute the race to the best of my ability and give everything I had and run without any regrets.
And I had nothing to lose. So that’s kind of the mindset I was going into the race with and just seeing where that was gonna take me.
SL: That’s great. I’d add that Kenneth is an athlete who thinks on his feet. Memorably at the USATF nationals last year, he went down after about 2½ laps. He lost 20m to the field with about 5 laps to go. And he got up and won the race. In your words, Kenneth, you thought in that moment of the great Henry Marsh, another renowned BYU steeplechaser whose trademark was racing from behind. So quickly you got a lot of attention. Just before that, you’d won the NCAA, of course.
Ed Eyestone is having a fantastic meet — with Conner Mantz and Clayton Young 8th and 9th in the marathon this morning and BYU soph James Corrigan also on the steeple team. But when you and Coach Eyestone talked about the race going in, did you have plans for different scenarios? What if they’re gonna go out and run 7:55 pace, or what if they’re going to deliver you the race that they did? Did you have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C?
Rooks: Yeah. Coach Eyestone and I sat down and we talked through just a few different race scenarios so that we could be prepared for different things.
One of the race scenarios was if they went out hot, to not run any faster than 65s or 64. That first lap, if they went out hot, hold back, maybe around 65s. That’s kind of what the plan was. That put me more toward the back.
We went out, the first K for the leaders was 2:40, which was 8:00-flat pace. And so that’s kind of the game plan I executed. We talked about what we would do if we went out slow or if I got the lead at the beginning, maybe I could control the race a little bit there.
But that’s how the race played out [fast with the pace 16-seconds under Rooks’ PR]. And so that’s the game plan that we executed. And the biggest thing with that was that going out at a hot pace, I needed to be paying attention to be close enough so that I could be able to respond late in the race.
SL: Yeah, I have to say that your move there with a lap to go was one of the most thrilling moments of the Games. As my colleague Jeff Hollobaugh and I were taking it in from the press tribune, I said, “he’s probably gonna finish 4th, but he’s never going to regret that he did this.”
Pardon me for having said that.
Rooks: It’s OK.
SL: It’s just, you gotta go for it. So when did you formulate the exact plan to make that move? Or did that just happen in the spur of the moment?
Rooks: You know, I don’t think there was an exact plan. I think that the plan was to try and be close enough to respond to moves late in the race. But I didn’t plan exactly how I was going to respond other than I visualized at the end of the race I wanted to give it everything and I wanted to just let loose.
So when I had moved up and I was kind of in that position, I just was like, You know what? I got nothing to lose. I’m just gonna go for it. I’m just gonna give it everything. I’m just going to see what’s gonna happen.
And I took off, took the lead, and then I was like, Is this actually happening? Am I actually… Did they let me just do this? Did they let me take the lead in the final?
And then in the backstretch, I was like, “Well, I might actually be able to win this thing if I keep this up.” And then I started to feel them catch back up. I started to get tired.
El Bakkali caught me, but I was able to keep composed and fight back for the silver.
SL: It was a beautiful visual. There were times on that last lap, you were looking around like a kid that just stole a piece of cake or something. Do you remember each of those glances back?
Rooks: Yes. I remember each of those glances back. I think everything that was going through my head was like, “Is this actually happening? Am I actually gonna medal?” That’s all the things that were going through my head. I probably shouldn’t have been looking around as much as I was [crowd laughs], but I was excited. But also freaking out.
SL: Even when you started to kick, you were pretty close to 10 seconds under your PR. How were you feeling and were you knowledgeable that you could handle that pace, that you were ready for a big PR?
Rooks: Yeah. I’ve been feeling like I was ready for a big PR. I’ve run a lot of races this year where I’ve been able to close down really hard at the end. And I’ve been doing 64s or 65s, trying to practice that in workouts. So actually when we went out that first 1200, I was like, “OK, I’m feeling alright.”
I knew we were a little under 8:15 pace at that time. And so I was like, “OK, I’m feeling good”, but I went into the race kind of expecting that I was probably going to run a personal best.
And it was nerve wracking just having to be like, OK, well I feel like I could run probably 10 seconds faster than my personal best. I didn’t really know exactly how much faster I could run at that point in time. But just trust my training and my fitness and just put myself in it and just see what was gonna happen.
SL: When you mention training for 64s and 65s, the question that comes to my mind is as a steeplechaser what kind of workouts do you do? Do you do those workouts over barriers? Are you doing them by yourself? Do you have other people running on the flat on the track near you? How do you do that?
Rooks: Well, I do a mix of different workouts. I do some longer tempo stuff. I do some faster speed stuff on the track, which is just, I guess, normal workouts every other athlete would be doing.
But in terms of steeplechase-specific workouts, one of the most common workouts that we do is 12/8/12/8 [1200m, 800m, 1200m, 800m] and we normally break it up.
The first and the last lap of the 1200 we do over hurdles and the middle laps open and in the 800s we do the first lap open and then the last lap over hurdles. That’s kind of like the steeplechase bread, butter workout that Coach Eyestone always has us do. So the goal when you’re doing that is to try and run the steeple laps at your goal race pace. And, if you can, run the open laps just a few seconds faster than the hurdle laps. But going into the Games, I’ve been running those faster than I’ve ever run them before.
SL: And faster since the Olympic Trials?
Rooks: Yes. Even since the Trials.
SL: The steeple doesn’t always find everybody, it’s a unique event. How did the steeple find you?
Rooks: Well, Coach Eyestone was a big part of that. He looks at athletes who would do multiple sports or maybe who might be good at softball. We play softball at cross country camp. Anyways… He thought that I’d be good at the steeple ’cause I played basketball and football and baseball growing up and thought that, OK, well usually the more athletic athletes take to hurdling better.
And so he got me on that path. I also wanted to try it out and in my freshman year [’19] ended up turning out really well. I qualified for the NCAA Championships as a true freshman and placed 11th at Nationals that year. That was just the beginning of my steeple dream. ◻︎
