American Ja’Kobe Tharp shattered the 110m hurdles world record with a blistering time of 12.75 seconds at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships held at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday.
The 20-year-old Auburn University standout’s effort in the heats improved upon the previous world record of 12.80 seconds, set by Olympic champion and fellow American Aries Merritt in Brussels in 2012.
Tharp’s performance, run with a legal tailwind of 1.0 m/s, also broke Grant Holloway’s NCAA record of 12.98 seconds set in 2019. This marked the first world record set at an NCAA championships since 1976, when Dwight Stones achieved a record mark in the high jump.
Coming into the meet with a personal best of 13.01 seconds, Tharp expressed surprise at his achievement. “I knew I had that in my legs. But it wasn’t on my bingo card before this meet, not at all,” he told reporters. “I was going pretty fast. The last three hurdles were kind of iffy. I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m coming up kind of fast.’ I thought maybe 12.97 or 12.98, and match the speed record. But to see that, it was like, ‘Ahhhh!’ I’m speechless, seriously … I really wanted to make a statement today.”
Tharp, an under-20s world champion, previously ran in the 110m hurdles final at the 2025 world championships in Tokyo, finishing sixth.
