After the ‘craziest’ race of his life, 16-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus will make history at the World Athletics Championships

By George Ramsay, CNN

(CNN) — More than 2,200 elite track and field athletes are descending on Tokyo for the upcoming world championships, but Cooper Lutkenhaus might be the only one to pack homework.

The 16-year-old from Texas is the youngest person in history to make the US team for the World Athletics Championships, taking time off from high school to compete. He won’t be able to escape schoolwork entirely, anticipating that it could even be a healthy distraction ahead of the biggest race of his life.

“It might be kind of good, just so I have something to do instead of sitting in the hotel room all day after training,” Lutkenhaus tells CNN Sports. “It’ll give me a break from that running side of things.”

No one, not even Lutkenhaus, expected him to be in this position. Ahead of the US national championships, where athletes were competing for a spot on the American team for Tokyo, his goal was simply to make the final.

That explains the look of utter disbelief – hands on head, mouth open wide – on Lutkenhaus’ face when he collected a silver medal in the 800 meters, surging past most of the field on the final straight.

His time? An astonishing 1:42.27, chopping more than a second off the under-18 world record. Only three American men in history have run faster, and one of them, Donavan Brazier, finished just a fraction in front of him.

Yet more thrilling was the way in which Lutkenhaus’ race played out. He was seventh and way off the front with half a lap to go, but then launched his devastating kick – passing two runners ahead of him and rapidly gaining on the lead pack of four. As his rivals started to tighten up, Lutkenhaus seemed only to get stronger, his strides fluid and smooth.

Crossing the finish line behind Brazier and seeing his time, he says, was “just a super exciting moment.” Weeks later, he was still in a state of shock over his performance.

“That last 100 (meters) was just the craziest last 100 I’ve ever ran,” adds Lutkenhaus. “The crowd was super loud. It was almost kind of like white noise because you hear it, but you’re also so zoned into the race you don’t hear it. Coming across that line, it was super special.”

The response to Lutkenhaus’ performance has been one of awe and incredulity. “Stunned and amazed” was how former runner Jim Ryun, widely regarded as one of the greatest ever high school athletes, reacted when asked by broadcaster Toni Reavis. Author and performance coach Steve Magness, meanwhile, called it “the most impressive athletic feat in history.”

“There are no superlatives,” Magness added. “His performance makes high school LeBron look like nobody.”

Lutkenhaus has absorbed most of this online reaction because getting compared to one of the NBA’s all-time greats is impossible to miss. But as far as he’s concerned, it changes nothing. He’s still training twice a day, still going to school and completing his homework in the evenings – the same routine he’s had for months.

“Obviously, people can say things, but I just focus on what I can control, which is how hard I work in practice, the recovery I do after practice,” says Lutkenhaus. “It’s just doing the little things the best that I can, and then just blocking out that outside noise.”

Now in his final two years at Northwest High School in Justin, Texas, Lutkenhaus has recently signed his first professional contract with Nike. It means that he will forego racing at future high school and collegiate meets, becoming the youngest-ever track and field athlete to join the brand.

As he prepares to compete at the world championships – his first time racing outside the US – Lutkenhaus is relying on the same schedule that has gotten him this far. He runs a modest 30 miles a week, a mixture of slower runs and speed work in the morning, sometimes followed by strength training, then heads to the gym in the afternoon for an elliptical ride and stretching.

That helps Lutkenhaus to fit everything around class and schoolwork.

“Running is two hours of the day, versus, what are you going to do for the other 22 hours of the day?” he says. “So having that eight hours in between my first run and then my elliptical in the afternoon, it kind of takes your mind off of it, where you don’t have to think about it every hour of the day.

“I can kind of just focus on: ‘We have math class, now we have history class.’ Having school with the running is a huge help.”

To have run such a fast time so early in his career, Lutkenhaus says, puts him “definitely ahead of schedule” in terms of what his capabilities might be.

He will now race alongside the USA’s fastest ever 800m runners – former world champion Brazier, American record holder Bryce Hoppel, and world indoor champion Josh Hoey – in Tokyo, with the simple goal of enjoying the moment and taking things one step at a time.

Despite entering the world championships as the sixth-fastest 800m runner this year, Lutkenhaus feels no pressure about his performance, no burden to recreate the same dizzying heights we saw at the national championships last month.

On that occasion, freed from any expectations, he produced the run of a lifetime.

“When I was at USAs and I made the final, I feel like most people were like: ‘Oh, that’s really cool, the high school kid made the final,’” says Lutkenhaus. “But nobody expected anything from me, so I really wanted to take advantage of that and see what I could do.

“I had zero pressure, at least in my eyes,” he adds. “I had everything to gain but nothing to lose.”

The situation will feel similar in Tokyo, where Lutkenhaus will be many years younger than his competitors and teammates. He’s determined to “give 100% effort” regardless of the result, while also enjoying the chance to race at the pinnacle of his sport. After all, it’s not often you have a legitimate reason to ask for two weeks away from school.

Lutkenhaus is optimistic that, at least this time, his teachers will give him a free pass: “I think, hopefully, they’re going to understand.”

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