The dream is delayed for Cooper Lutkenhaus: three cheers to the kid for a seaon for the ages

Some doubt has to creep in though. If you could inject truth serum into his coach, what does he think he got wrong?

He’ll PR next season if he gets into a fast race with a field determined to run fast. Guaranteed. No one can say what he will eventually run in terms of career PR but he has not PRd at 16. But a lot of slow (jealous?) 800 runners on this site hope that’s the case. It’s basically the same as the BS tossed at Jim Ryun after he broke 4, made the Oly team and then finished last in his semi at age 17. About nine months later he ran a PR that happened to be his first US National Record. By the time Cooper is wrapping up his senior year in ‘27 I hope he can have similar success.

Agreed, I think being that far "ahead of schedule" could've been harmful long-term. Expectations would've been absolutely crushing, and any normal growing pains would've felt like major setbacks.

Lutkenhaus' USATFs performance was so shockingly great that some people forgot he's still a work in progress. He deserves time to keep developing, we're still several years out from his peak form.

Not really. If Cooper was favored to win or medal and failed, then you could say "Goes Home Devastated". Josh Kerr went home "Devastated", Cole Hocker (in the 1500) is "Devastated". Cooper is not "Devastated", he may be disappointed, but I'm sure he realizes that accomplishing what he did this season is nothing short of AWESOME!

You left some NR holders at home during the Olympics. UKA leaves so many people at home that your best shot putter since people could full throttle HGH has said she is switching the country she will compete for(haven't seen any updates on that though).

Lutkenhaus is a national treasure. It'll be great to be able to watch his development over a decade or two.

It doesn’t sour anything as just making the US trials final is a good achievement at 16 let alone making top 3 and running a 1.42.

It felt a mistake not to race on the circuit somewhere between the Trials and WC and I think the way things played out have shown that to be the case.

i often chatted in the evenings with arch jelley, who is 102 years old now. still playing bridge, still doing 6km walks, with body squats. has the legs to this day to prove it. arch is the most lovely man

read his whole library, cerutti, pirie, lydiard, some fiction, with a danish, an american and a german, going to the line in a 2050 world champs, where they ran like 10.6 per 100m, in an 800, to give a taste of the orthodox and wonder if the library

he said back in 77, why hasn't someone run 139?

with the tracks, shoes, hacks, and of course peds, it is going to happen.

there are many athletes that could do it, but track is a lousy sport for cash, and the other sports are more fun in competition, though running is zen, and pretty fine.

anyway 139 is coming.

with that said i will be hoping for ryan incarnate, or any other athlete that is not blatantly on drugs, to do 139

run young man run.

enjoy the good bad and ugly.

spartan style, zen style

he will never run that fast again. peaked in HS.

He was incredible to just make it to the World Championship and such a fast time and silver medal in the US Championships in a hyper competitive event. Some call it the greatest race since Jim Ryun beat a prime Peter Snell. Still I think only one youth has made it to a World Championship level semifinal or finals.

A 17 year old Mary Cain made it to the semi-finals of the 1500m event at the 2013 IAAF World Championships in Moscow, and from there, she advanced to the final, becoming the youngest 1500m finalist in World Championship history.

But what Cooper did at 16 is just amazing and he's still the youngest to make in to the World Championships.

They didn't have world championship's in Mary Decker's day and she was quite crazy talented as a 14 and 15 year old, but Cooper is certainly a rare and generational talent!

You hope. You’re definitely one of the jealous dorks an earlier poster noted. Just becuse you never broke 2:05 doesn’t mean you have to jealous of a supremely talented kid and hoping he never runs faster. What is wrong with you?

By running in lane two, the outside of lane two, and even lane three on the turns, he ran an extra 6.8m/lap to 13.6m/lap or roughly 16-18m total, which is 2% more. At 1:46 pace, he'd go 16m in 2.12s. He ran 1:47.68, the winner was Wyderka in 1:46.30. Subtract 2s from 1:47.68 and you get 1:45.68, so without the extra distance he was roughly 0.6s ahead of the heat winner. So, this was a case of tactics as much as the long season. They went out in low 25, slowed to 28, 28, then closed around 25 mid, so basically, this was a race where he could easily have used the middle 400m when the race slowed as an opportunity to easily cruise into contention in advance of the last 200m. But this was a good learning opportunity for him after a really, really long season, and he has so much room to grow in the sport at just 16 until near the end of the year. He might be coming back in LA at 19 as the world record holder with a 44.x 400m pr to go with a 3:48 mile, if he continues to improve through physical maturity alone, like almost all beginning junior classmen do.

Runs a 1:42 at Nationals and 1:47 in the heats at Worlds...something is suspicious.

Yeah, there is a lot of that jealousy in this place.

Bitter dorks abound, like this disingenuous jealous fraud who has probably never raced, but he does have a furry costume with front and back cut-outs for easy bf access.