Auburn fast: World record holder Ja'Kobe Tharp races to glory

AUBURN, Ala. –  After Ja’Kobe Tharp won the Tennessee state hurdles championship his junior year in high school, college offers quickly followed with coaches telling him how great he was.

All except one. Auburn’s Ken Harnden took a different approach.

“He was the only coach who told me that I wasn’t good at hurdles,” Tharp recalled. “Coming out of high school my senior year, I was U.S. No. 2. He comes to me and says, ‘You really can’t hurdle so we’re going to build you from the ground up.’ That intrigued me. I had a gut feeling that Coach Ken was the coach who could get me where I wanted to be. When somebody tells you you’re not good and you think you are, I want to see what you’re going to do with me.”

The results have been otherworldly.

“He got me to a place that I wouldn’t have believed two years ago,” Tharp told Andy Burcham on the Talking Tigers Podcast.  

After Tharp won SEC outdoors and finished second at NCAA outdoors in the 110m hurdles as a freshman in 2025, he and Harnden, the 1995 NCAA 400m hurdles champion at North Carolina, refined Ja’Kobe’s start, trimming it from eight steps to seven before the first hurdle.

“We want my start to be efficient to set me up so I can run fast in the last couple hurdles,” Tharp said. “I’m not trying to destroy people out of the blocks. I’m trying to set myself up to run the best race I can at the end.

“In Lima, Peru, Coach Ken said something that stuck with me. He said it doesn’t matter what happens through six hurdles. What happens after that is what happens after that. The race isn’t over until you cross the finish line and you jump 10 hurdles. I’m never panicking when people are ahead of me at two or three hurdles because I know I’m coming at some point.”

After being cut from his seventh-grade basketball team, Tharp tried track and field. He wanted to run the 100m and 200m – “the fun stuff,” as he calls it – but his middle school coach told the tall youngster his height suited him for hurdles.

“Nobody wants to run hurdles because nobody wants to fall in front of a bunch of people,” Tharp said. “That was a big fear of mine, but I’ve never fallen.”

As a freshman in 2024, Tharp ran 13.20 at NCAA outdoors, finishing second by one hundredth of a second.

“I was devastated,” Tharp said. “The following year, my entire goal was to win indoors and out.”

Done and done. Tharp won both NCAA titles – indoors and outdoors – as a sophomore in 2025. Finishing second at SEC outdoors gave him more motivation for his junior season.

“This year, I wanted to complete the full sweep,” he said. “That was the driving factor. I told Coach Ken before this year started, I don’t want to lose a single race at all during my NCAA season, not a single race.”

Harnden’s response, again, was unfiltered.

“’All right, do what I tell you to do,’” Tharp recalls Harnden saying.

Mission accomplished once again. Tharp not only won SEC outdoors, he did so on his home track.

“Everybody you know is going to be at that track meet,” Tharp said of the added pressure. “Probably one of the most nervous meets I’ve been to since I’ve been in college because it was at home and the stakes were high.”

With hundreds of Auburn fans watching at Hutsell-Rosen Track, Tharp tied his school record by running 13.05 while setting the meet record.

“It’s amazing to have this great support staff behind me,” said Tharp, who quickly turned the page to his next challenge. “I don’t try to dwell on the past too much. I won, I got back to the tent, cooled down, got a massage, went home and started focusing right on NCAAs.”

Two weeks later, Tharp again ran 13.05 at NCAA east preliminaries in Lexington, Kentucky, to qualify for the NCAA outdoor championships in Eugene, Oregon.

“People in Oregon, they love track and field,” said Tharp, who trains to be in peak condition for NCAAs at Hayward Field. “I’m always in really good shape when I go to Eugene and the results show. If there are a whole lot of people in the crowd, I’m probably going to run fast.”

For Ja’Kobe, meet day is meat day, fueled by McDonald’s precisely three hours before he races.

“Two cheeseburger meal from McDonald’s, a six-piece nugget and a water,” Tharp said of the pre-race routine that began when we won the state 110m hurdles championship his junior year of high school in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

“Once I won on it one time, I was like, okay, I’m going to stick with it,” he said.

Leading up to the 2026 NCAA outdoor championships semifinals, Tharp’s practices were not his cleanest, not uncommon for him before big races.

The pressure intensified when his teammates and training partners set an NCAA record in the 4x100m relay less than an hour before Tharp’s semifinal.

In the heat before Ja’Kobe’s, Texas hurdler Kendrick Smallwood ran 13.02, one hundredth of a second behind Tharp’s personal best of 13.01

“Once again, I’m going to send a statement to show everybody that I’m here,” Tharp said. “Got into the blocks, focused a lot on my execution, and the gun went off and I blanked out.

“I only remember the last three hurdles because they felt bad. I went through the line, the time posted at 12.75 and I just started screaming, ‘That’s the world record! That’s the world record!’ The rest is history.”

Tharp’s magnificent accomplishment was the first world record set at the national championships in 50 years.

“I had no idea,” he said.

There was still another NCAA title to chase two days later. After the record, Tharp and Harnden, Auburn’s sprints coach and assistant head coach, crafted their gameplan at the team hotel.

“We’ve got to focus on what we do best,” Tharp said. “We win in moments like these. Whenever the pressure’s on and the lights are bright, I’m going to show up.”

Harnden encouraged Tharp to focus on his fundamentals instead of trying to run fast. Ja’Kobe tried to stay off his phone while he rested for Friday’s final. In the two days between the prelims and the final, Tharp gained 13,000 Instagram followers.

With Smallwood one lane to his right, Tharp ran 12.90 to complete his season sweep and win his second straight 110m NCAA title in what would be his final race as an Auburn Tiger.

“The cheer was loud so my heart started beating even faster,” Tharp said. “’On your marks,’ and the crowd got silent. That’s probably the quietest I’ve ever heard a crowd in my life.

“Ironically, I tried to run fast. If you watched a video of my prelim and my final race, you can tell the difference in the way I look. I’m trying super hard in the final and people are close to me. I tried to run fast, and I ended up getting it done anyway. Like Coach Ken says, I don’t have to be perfect to win a race.”

As is his custom, Tharp refuses to dwell on his ample achievements.

“Great things happened but we’ve got to move forward,” Tharp said. “The year’s not done yet so I’m trying to stay focused. I’m only 20 years old. I’m not even – as my dad would say – in my ‘man body’ yet.”

After returning to Oregon over the Fourth of July for the Prefontaine Classic, Tharp sets his sights on the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Sept. 11-13 in Budapest, Hungary, after announcing on July 1 that he was turning professional.

“I plan on doing something big at the Ultimate Championships this year,” he said. “This is new for me. I just know there’s prize money and I’m going to get it.”

The Los Angeles Olympics are only two years away. Once again, Harnden’s wisdom resonates with Ja’Kobe Tharp.

“I want to end my track career saying I was the greatest of all time,” he said. “Records are meant to be broken. Like Coach Ken says, you’ll forever be a world champ, you’ll forever be Olympic champ. Nobody can take your medal away.

“Those are really big goals but I’m trying to stay as focused as I can in the moment to get myself in a situation where I can go there and make that happen for my country.”

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on X: @jeff_shearer