Jordan Anthony received a championship belt from Noah Lyles, signaling a new king of the U.S. sprints, at least for one day.
Anthony, the 2025 NCAA 60m and 100m champion, claimed his first national title as a pro, taking the 60m at the USA Track and Field Indoor Championships in Staten Island, New York, on Sunday.
Anthony won in 6.45 seconds, overtaking 2016 World Indoor 60m champion Trayvon Bromell by two hundredths. Lyles, the Olympic 100m gold medalist and four-time world 200m champion, was third in 6.51.
Afterward, Lyles handed a championship belt to Anthony, one of his training partners outside Orlando. Lyles won the 60m at his most recent USATF Indoors appearance in 2024.
USATF INDOORS: Results
“The start of my season, I didn’t have two good races,” Anthony told Lewis Johnson on NBC Sports. “I needed a little bit of humbling to remember who I am, that dog mentality. Those two races did a lot to me. Everybody said I fell off. I was trying to find out where I was.”
Nationals is a qualifying meet for the World Indoor Championships in Poland from March 20-22 (on NBCSN and Peacock). Nations can qualify up to two spots per individual event at worlds, plus a possible third if an athlete earned a World Indoor Tour wild card.
Lyles said before nationals that even if he qualified for the team, he wouldn’t go to world indoors since it is too close to his early April wedding to Jamaican sprinter Junelle Bromfield.
“I have no doubt in Jordan,” Lyles said. “I watched him at the beginning of the year, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m not going to (world) indoors, so I guess he’s winning.’”
Anthony is the world’s fastest man in the 60m in 2026, clocking 6.43 three weeks ago.
“I enjoy training with (Lyles),” said Anthony, who also played wide receiver at the University of Arkansas. “It’s a great mutual relationship between each other. Of course, we’re going to talk smack. The sport is soft if we don’t. So, I’m bringing football mentality. He’s just bringing old age right now.”
Also Sunday, 17-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus won the men’s 800m in 1:46.68, becoming the youngest American to win a national track and field title since Athing Mu-Nikolayev won the women’s 600m at age 16 in 2019.
Last year, Lutkenhaus was runner-up in the 800m at the USATF Outdoor Championships, becoming at 16 the youngest American to compete in a World Outdoor Track and Field Championships. He was eliminated in the heats at outdoor worlds in Tokyo in September.
Lutkenhaus prevailed Sunday over a field that did not include the other 2025 world team members in the men’s 800m — Donavan Brazier and Bryce Hoppel.
He’ll compete at indoor worlds, which take place during his Texas high school’s spring break.
“Going to Tokyo and just not going the way I wanted to, so just going into that first round (at world indoors), kind of having that memory in the back of my mind that it’s not fun to lose,” Lutkenhaus said. “That pain hurt pretty bad in Tokyo, so we’re going to remember that later in Poland and work off of it.”
Nikki Hiltz won a record-extending seventh consecutive U.S. women’s 1500m title including both indoor and outdoor nationals.
Hiltz swept U.S. indoor and outdoor 1500m titles in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
“Happy an old dog like me, at 31, can still come away with a win,” Hiltz told Johnson.
Nathan Green was the surprise men’s 1500m champion, edging former University of Washington teammate Luke Houser by two hundredths -- 3:37.65 to 3:37.67.
Olympic bronze and gold medalists Yared Nuguse and Cole Hocker were fourth and fifth. Hocker and Nuguse went one-two in Saturday’s 3000m.
Jacious Sears earned her first national title in the 60m. In 2024, Sears was the world’s fastest woman going into the Olympic Trials, but missed the meet due to injury.
Jasmine Moore, the Olympic bronze medalist in the long jump and triple jump, swept the two events on Saturday and Sunday.
