As Auburn junior Ja’Kobe Tharp cleared hurdle after hurdle at the NCAA Track and Field Championships on Wednesday evening, déjà vu rushed over one particularly interested observer inside Hayward Field.
“As soon as he got to about hurdle eight (of 10), I was like, this could potentially be a world record,” Aries Merritt said.
Merritt, an assistant coach for Texas State, was in the crowd to watch his pupil, Ja’Shaun Lloyd, run in the previous heat.
He stuck around for Tharp’s race, seated next to Trey Cunningham, the 2026 world leader in the 110m hurdles to that point.
Merritt and Cunningham witnessed history. Tharp broke the world record by clocking 12.75 seconds in the preliminary heats (semifinals) of the NCAA Championships.
Not just any world record. A nearly 14-year-old world record — 12.80 seconds — held by none other than Merritt.
JA'KOBE THARP ARE YOU KIDDING ME 🤯 12.75
— NCAA Track & Field (@NCAATrackField) June 11, 2026
✅ NCAA RECORD
✅ WORLD RECORD#NCAATF x 🎥 ESPN / @AuburnTFXC pic.twitter.com/YuN7crt8kc
So Merritt, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist who retired five years ago, had the rare experience of watching his own world record get broken mere feet in front of him.
“The way (Tharp) was gapping everyone, it just was so reminiscent of when I did it,” Merritt said by phone Thursday.
By the time Tharp cleared the last hurdle, Merritt knew the record was gone. He didn’t need to see the clock.
“My record should have fallen a long time ago,” Merritt said. “I thought Grant Holloway would break it years ago.”
Holloway, who in 2024 became the first American to win Olympic 110m hurdles gold since Merritt, missed Merritt’s record by one hundredth of a second in 2021.
Instead the man to break it was Tharp, the youngest man to break a world record in an individual Olympic running event since Renaldo Nehemiah in the same event in 1979.
The 6-foot-4-inch Tennessean dunked from the free-throw line in high school, Auburn coach Ken Harnden said.
Tharp, the 2024 World U20 champion (20 years after Merritt’s world junior title) and 2025 U.S. champion (at age 19), made a great leap Wednesday. His previous personal best was 13.01 seconds, ranking outside the 30 fastest men in history.
“Me handing the torch off to him, it was an honor,” Merritt said. “It was something that I’ve been waiting to do for someone for a very long time, because there’s just no way that the record stayed as long as it did with these new shoes, with the new technology. Tracks are faster. Everything’s just better. So these kids have all this opportunity. So it was only a matter of time before someone did it. I’m happy that it was him. I’m happy that it stays in America. I’m happy I was able to witness it.”
Merritt first met Tharp two years ago. As a track fan in addition to a coach, he admired the precocious talent from afar even before that.
“There are two types of hurdlers on this planet,” Merritt said. “There are start hurdlers, whose starts are just blistering. Then there’s finish hurdlers, hurdlers who finish the race very well. It’s more favorable to the athletes who can finish their race well to break a world record. Ja’Kobe is very much a finish hurdler. He’s not a start hurdler, though. So, when he executed his start yesterday, that’s what put the record in danger.”
Merritt and Tharp met up about 20 minutes after the world record at the Hayward warm-up track.
Merritt congratulated Tharp, who was still in shock.
“I just didn’t have that on my bingo card today,” Tharp told Merritt, who could relate.
“It was kind of funny, because the wild thing is when you’re trying to break a world record, you never do it,” Merritt said, “and when you’re just out there running free, running relaxed, you do it. It just happens.”
Like Tharp this year, Merritt went into 2012 having never broken 13 seconds. By the end of that year, he did it 10 times (two were not wind-legal). He attacked the record at meet after meet, unsuccessfully.
But then, in the last race of the season, on tired legs, he ran 12.80 at the Diamond League Final in Brussels. He lowered the record of 12.87 set by Cuban Dayron Robles in 2008.
“I kept trying for it and failing,” he said. “The time that I stopped trying for the record, it just happened.”
Merritt then held onto the record through the end of his career -- through earning a 2015 World Championships bronze medal with kidney function at less than 20 percent. He underwent a transplant afterward -- receiving a kidney from sister LaToya.
In all, Merritt held the record longer than any of his 110m hurdles predecessors.
Tharp sometimes watches old, fast 110m hurdles races on nights before big meets.
So it was on Tuesday in Eugene, Oregon, that he pulled up Merritt’s world record from 2012 (video atop this post) for a little inspiration.
“Fastest hurdles race ever,” Tharp reasoned after Wednesday’s world record. “Well, it was.”
Merritt noted that he became an Olympic gold medalist before breaking the world record, which allowed him to run free late in that 2012 season.
“Ja’Kobe is going to have a little bit more pressure than I had,” he said, “but I think that he’s an athlete that thrives in pressure.”
