This Kid Is DESTROYING World Records – Even Bolt Is STUNNED! – Ja’Kobe Tharp

Jacobe Tharp just broke the world record in the 110 meter hurdles in a semi-final, not the final, a qualifying round. And when he crossed the line, he genuinely thought he had run a bad race. His exact words on live ESPN television were this. My last three hurdles were kind of trash. I figured I ran maybe 12.

97 12.98. Broke the collegiate record. Cool. More for tomorrow. Then he looked up at the scoreboard and what he said next stopped an entire stadium cold. But before we get there, you need to understand where this kid actually came from. Because the world record is just the tip of the iceberg. The real story starts in a middle school gym in Tennessee with a kid who got cut from the basketball team and had absolutely no idea what to do next.

 Murphy’sboro, Tennessee, big sports town, football on Friday nights, basketball in the winter. Everyone has a sport and everyone has a plan. And Jacobe Tharp’s plan from the moment he could walk was basketball. It made sense. His mom, Amanda, played college basketball at Tennessee Martin. His dad, Jimmy, played at high school level.

 The family spoke basketball, dreamed basketball. The NBA was the ceiling, and Tharp was going to find out how close he could get. Seventh grade, he tries out for the school basketball team. He gets cut. Not injured, not too young, just cut. Not good enough. Go find something else to do. Think about what that feels like at 12 years old.

Basketball is the whole plan. Basketball is the family identity. and the coach looks at you and says, “No.” Tharp needs to fill his afternoons with something. His middle school track coach pulls him aside and tells him to try hurdles. Thararp does not want to do it. His reason is the most honest thing you will ever hear from a future world record holder.

 He is scared of falling over one of the hurdles, not scared of losing, not scared of the competition, scared of literally tripping over a piece of equipment and landing on his face in front of everyone. The coach tells him to just try. One year later, Jacobe Tharp wins the Tennessee middle school hurdle state championship. One year, zero to state champion.

 The kid who did not want to fall over a hurdle is now the best middle school hurdler in the entire state. But here is where the story gets complicated because just when the path starts to look clear, everything stops. 2020, the pandemic. Tharp is heading into 9th grade with real momentum. State champion, improving times, a future in front of him that is starting to look like something real.

His entire season is canceled. not shortened, canceled, no races, no competition, no times on the board, one full year of development gone before he ever got started at the high school level. For a lot of young athletes, that kind of interruption breaks the momentum permanently. You lose the rhythm, you lose the confidence, you come back a year later feeling like you are starting over and the gap to the athletes who somehow kept training feels impossible to close.

 FARP uses the time to go back to basketball. Makes the team as a sophomore, still splitting his attention, still not fully committed to the track. When he comes back to hurdles, he has to prove himself all over again. And the bigger hurdles are waiting. High school competition runs over 39in barriers. College runs over 42-in barriers.

 3 in does not sound like much until you are running at full speed and your stride pattern is built around one height and you suddenly have to recalibrate everything. Most coaches look at a 6’4 teenager and think the higher hurdles are going to be a problem. The kid is long, the stride is long, the clearance might be off. One coach looks at Jacobe Tharp and thinks the exact opposite.

 Ken Harnen, Auburn University assistant coach, former Olympic hurdler, still the Zimbabwe national record holder in the 400 meter hurdles at 48.05 seconds. A man who has spent his career taking raw talent and turning it into something the world cannot ignore. When Tharp is being recruited out of high school, Auburn is one of several schools in the conversation, but something about Harnen makes the decision easy.

 Tharp later says it himself. Out of all the schools recruiting me, that is why I came here. I knew Coach Ken was going to get me where I needed to be. But the detail that makes this relationship real is what happens when Tharp signs. His mom Amanda sits down with Harnen and gives him direct permission to do whatever is necessary.

 Do what you have to do to get my kid to the next level academically and as a person. That is a mother handing her son to a coach and trusting him completely. That is not a recruiting pitch. That is a family decision. And Harnen takes it seriously. There is one detail about how Tharp gets recruited to Auburn that tells you everything about what kind of athlete he was before the track ever found him.

 His high school basketball highlights are part of the recruiting package Harnen receives. Videos [music] of Tharp taking off from the free throw line and dunking. That 6’4 frame launching off one foot and clearing the rim. Harnen watches those videos and immediately understands something the basketball coaches never did. Those legs were built for hurdles.

That body was built to fly. 2024 World Under 20 Championships, Lima, Peru. Jacobe Tharp is 18 years old. He steps onto the global stage for the first time and wins gold world champion at under 20 level. While doing it, he breaks a Tennessee high school record that had stood for 42 years. Back at Auburn, he becomes the first freshman to win an SEC outdoor title in any event since 2011.

The hurdling world is now fully paying attention. 2025 NCAA Indoor title. NCAA outdoor title, US Championships title, the best collegiate hurdler in America, and then Tokyo in September, the World Athletics Championships, his first senior global final. He finishes sixth, sixth in the world at 19 years old in his first ever senior world championship.

 But here is the thing about Sixth. Sixth is not on the podium. Sixth does not break records. Sixth says you belong in the conversation, but does not say you are the conversation. Grant Holloway is the conversation Olympic champion, multiple world titles, a personal best of 12.81 at the 2021 Olympic trials, the closest any human being had come to Aries Merritt’s world record of 12.

80, which had been sitting untouched since 2012. 14 years. 14 years that record had stood. Holloway could not break it. Devon Allen ran 12.84 in 2022 and could not break it. The best hurdlers on the planet kept coming close and kept falling short. The night before June 10th, 2026, Jacobe Tharp sits alone in his room and watches race footage.

Merritt’s 12.80 from Brussels. Holloway’s 12.98 at NCAA’s Holloway’s 12.81 personal best. He watches them over and over, not to scare himself, to convince himself that he belongs in that conversation. All right, he thinks before he goes to sleep, I can do that. He has no idea what is about to happen. His personal best going into the NCAA Championships is 13.01. 01 seconds.

 Let me explain what the gap between 13.01 and 12.80 actually means in hurdles because it matters. You are not just running faster. You are clearing 10 barriers at full speed with your stride pattern, your rhythm, your clearance height, and your acceleration all needing to connect perfectly for less than 13 seconds.

 Every hundth of a second you want to find has to come from somewhere. Technique, reaction, drive phase, clearance, efficiency. You cannot just decide to run faster over hurdles. The body has to do things it has never done before at a speed it has never reached before. The gap between 13.01 and 12.80 is not just 2/10 of a second.

 It is a completely different race. Nobody watching Tharp warm up on June 10th and Eugene thinks a world record is possible. Nobody in the press box, nobody in the stands, nobody on the coaching staff of any other team, not even Tharp. He is focused on executing his race. His coach, Ken Harden, says one word before the semi-final. Execute.

That is it. No speech, no target time, no instruction to chase the record. Just execute. Tharp walks to the blocks. The gun fires. Now, before I tell you what happens next, think about Grant Holloway for a second. Because Holloway has spent years carrying this event, defending it, winning everything there is to win the Olympic gold, the world titles, the records.

 He has been the face of 110 meter hurdles for half a decade. He has spoken publicly about what the event means, about the next generation, about wanting to see what the human body can ultimately do over these barriers. If Holloway could have been standing at Hayward Field that day and seen what was about to happen, you know exactly what he would have said.

 He would have said, “This is what the event has been building toward. a 20-year-old kid from Tennessee who almost chose basketball, who was scared of falling over a hurdle, who lost a year to a pandemic, coming out on the biggest collegiate stage in America and doing something nobody in history has ever done. That is the kind of moment Holloway has been talking about since he took over this event and then Jacobe Tharp delivers it.

 Drop it in the comments right now. The night before the biggest race of your life, do you watch the best performances ever run to motivate yourself, or does that make the nerves worse? I genuinely want to know. June 10th, 2026. Hayward Field, Eugene, Oregon. The second semi-final of the men’s 110 meter hurdles at the NCAA outdoor championships.

 [music] Tharp comes out of the blocks. Halfway through the race, a thought crosses his mind. These hurdles are coming up fast. Too fast, maybe. His rhythm feels off. His last three barriers feel sloppy. He pushes through to the line and crosses it. Thinking one thing. I probably just ran about 12.97, maybe 12.98.

 I broke the collegiate record. That is good. Save something for the final on Friday. He looks up at the scoreboard at the south end of Hayward Field. It reads 12.76. Tharp stares at it. Then it gets corrected. 12.75 12.75 seconds. The entire stadium at Hayward Field goes completely silent. One journalist covering the meet says he has attended championships for 5 years and has never seen the crowd react like that. Silent first then erupting.

 Let me put 12.75 in full context because it deserves it. Aries Merritt set the world record at 12.80 in Brussels in 2012. 14 years ago the best hurdlers alive kept coming and kept falling short. Holloway ran 12.81 and could not get it. Allan ran 12.84 and could not get it. Jacobe Tharp did not just break the record.

 He skipped the 12.9s and the 12.8s entirely and became the first human being in history to run the 110 m hurdles in the 12.7s. He also broke Holloway’s collegiate record of 12.98 set in 2019 by 2300ths of a second. Two records, both broken, in a semi-final with imperfect technique against nobody in the field who was supposed to push him to that level.

 On the ESPN broadcast, Tharp says the words that the entire athletics world is still repeating today. I swear I didn’t mean to. Then 12.75. I have more in my legs. I have no words. I’m speechless. I don’t know. I don’t know. Say it one more time. 12.75. The first person in history to run in the 12.7s.

 And he thought his last three hurdles were trash. After the race reporters ask Tharp what he was thinking when the number came up. He gives them the most Jacobe Tharp answer possible. He says he knew he was ready to drop something crazy. He knew what he was capable of, but a world record was not on his bingo chart. Not on his bingo chart.

 The kid who got cut from seventh grade basketball, who did not want to hurdle because he was scared of falling. Who lost a full year to a pandemic before he ever got started. Who spent the night before watching Merritt and Holloway just trying to convince himself he belonged. That kid just became the fastest hurdler in human history and described it as something that was not on his bingo [music] chart.

 And he has a final still to run on Friday. He has not peaked yet. He has not hit his prime years. He is 20 years old and he just ran an imperfect race with trash final hurdles and became the best to ever do it. LA 2028 is 2 years away. Home Olympics American soil. Tharp will be 22, the final of the 110 m hurdles in front of the biggest crowd in the sport with a world record already to his name and two full years of development left ahead of him. If 12.

75 came from a bad race in a semi-final, what does a perfect race in an Olympic final look like? So, here’s what I want you to tell me in the comments. Los Angeles 2028, Jacobe Tharp in the Olympic 110 meter hurdles final. Home crowd, everything on the line. Does he run under 12.70 and put a number on the board that stands for the next 20 years, or does the pressure of a home Olympics change things? Drop it below.

 Every comment gets