Brazier Wins, But Lutkenhaus Rises To No. 4 American Of All-Time With Ferocious Final Kick To Make World Championship Team

By Oliver Hinson of DyeStat

Becky Holbrook photos

INTERVIEWS

EUGENE — The most electrifying moment of the USATF Outdoor Championships was a second-place finish.

That belonged to 16-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus, who shocked the world on Sunday with his performance in the men’s 800 meters. In a field with three world champions, he beat two, finishing second in the final, qualifying for the World Championships in Tokyo, and breaking the U18 world record in the process with an almost unthinkable time of 1:42.27.

“I don’t know if there’s words for it right now,” Lutkenhaus said. “But… I just made the team running that fast. That’s something special.”

Lutkenhaus had already produced one of the highlights of the weekend just to make the final. On Friday afternoon, he nearly fell in his semifinal heat of the men’s 800 meters, but stayed on his feet, clawed back from seventh place with 300 meters left, and slingshotted his way to a second place finish, qualifying for the final with 1:45.57.

After that race, he said the semifinal was his final. “Now we’ll go see what I can do in two days,” he said, in sheer disbelief that he had made it that far. There were few expectations on him Sunday afternoon. 

But Lutkenhaus wasn't done and the sheer talent poured out of him over a final 100 meters that he covered in 12.48 seconds. He closed a gap and passed four of them five men in front of him as the Hayward Field crowd of 6,977 erupted.

Brazier ran a lifetime best 1:42.16 and only won because Lutkenhaus ran out of room.

Just take a look at the picture of him crossing the finish line with his head in his hands. By his own account, he had no idea he could run this fast.

“You always wanna say you do, but you never know,” Lutkenhaus said. “I knew I could PR, I knew I could run faster than 1:45, but actually going out there and doing it, it was definitely a shock.”

1:42.27 is a lot of things:

For one, it’s a three-second personal best, which also means it’s a high school national record by three seconds. At the beginning of the season, that record stood at 1:46.45 and belonged to Michael Granville, who had owned it since 1996. In a record-happy age of high school track and field, Granville’s mark was viewed as one of the hardest to break.

Lutkenhaus broke that record three times this season, taking progressively larger chunks of time off with each performance. First, at the Brooks PR Invitational in Seattle on June 8, he ran 1:46.26 to claim it as his own (although he said afterwards that he didn’t really feel like he owned it yet). 

Two weeks later, he demolished the record again, running 1:45.45 to win the 800 at Nike Outdoor Nationals on June 21. That performance, of course, garnered even more attention; it showed that he was unquestionably the best high school 800-meter runner of all-time and doing int in cold, rainy conditions indicated that he was ready for something bigger.

Lutkenhaus is now the fastest half-miler in high school history by four seconds, and he has two more years at Justin Northwest High in the Dallas-Forth Worth area to lower his record even further.

He’s also the sixth fastest man in the world this year and is tied for the 19th fastest all-time. No one under 18 has run within a second of his world record, and only one man — Nijel Amos — sits ahead of him on the U20 all-time list.  He's the fourth fastest American, behind Bryce Hoppel, Josh Hoey and Brazier.

"I saw someone coming up and thought, 'Dang this could be the high schooler,'" Brazier said. "The kid's phenomental. I'm glad I'm 28 and maybe only have a few years left in me. Hopefully I won't have to deal with him in his prime, because he's pretty special."

Lutkenhaus’ dominance is on par with that of Quincy Wilson, a fellow high school phenom. Wilson is a year older than Lutkenhaus and is in a few of the same positions as him; he’s the U18 world record holder in the men’s 400 meters and is second on the U20 all-time list. However, Lutkenhaus has a leg up on him in terms of all-time standings — Wilson is 37th — and as of Sunday, he’s done something that Wilson hasn’t: he’s qualified for a U.S. team in an individual event.

Lutkenhaus' achievement also resembled that of Alan Webb when he smashed Jim Ryun's national high school record with 3:53.43 in 2001 at the Prefontaine Classic in a field of pros that included world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj. 

Longtime spectators at Hayward Field said Lutkenhaus' achievement was one of the most exciting things they'd ever seen in track and field. 

As a pure demonstration of fitness — say, a paced time trial with wavelights — it would have been the biggest story of the day. Anyone who watched that race, though, knows that it wasn’t, and the race dynamics are what made it all-time moment at Hayward Field. 

Lutkenhaus came in knowing that the leaders would run the first lap in less than 50 seconds, and he knew that would be a little too fast for him, so he decided to hang towards the back of the pack. He came through 400 meters in 50.66 seconds, which was still quicker than he anticipated. He was seventh at the bell.

“That 50 point high, 51 low is kind of my sweet spot,” Lutkenhaus said. “I didn’t know it was the sweet spot at the time, but now it might be a good starting point.”

With 200 meters left, he was still in seventh place. Hoey, who was leading at the time, came through 600 meters a second ahead of Lutkenhaus. At that point, the race looked similar to what most people had imagined it would be; Hoey led a pack of four with Hoppel, Brazier and Brandon Miller in tow. 

Something clicked for Lutkenhaus in the last 200, though, as he drew on experience that his competitors had probably forgotten about: middle school racing.

“I’ve always just kind of had a natural spot with 200 to go,” Lutkenhaus said. “Ever since middle school, that’s really been the spot that I’ve really pushed from, so I kind of just decided to go back to middle school tactics with 200 to go and really give everything I had left.”

Lutkenhaus started racing in the seventh grade, or four track seasons ago. Middle school. 

Watching from the stands, his father, George, expected to see a move. They had discussed it beforehand: Cooper would surge from his signature spot and pick off as many people as he could. 

“Obviously, we didn’t anticipate that many,” George said.

Lutkenhaus’ kick was furious, to say the least; he covered his final 200 meters in 25.42 seconds. No one else’s final 200 was within a second — Brazier’s was the next fastest at 26.59. 

Lutkenhaus blew by Miller, Hoey and Hoppel in the last 100 as the crowd roared.

It’s a gear that his father is used to seeing, albeit not in this context. He remembers seeing it at the Texas state championships in Cooper’s freshman year, when he closed in a little over 25 seconds to win in 1:49.84. Against these competitors, though? With this pace and these stakes?

George was blown away.

“It’s one of those things you don’t really process at the moment,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day, you’ll know a little more, but I think for the first hour, my hands were shaking. It’s just unbelievable. That’s all I can say.”

It was even more unbelievable considering the fact that Cooper was dealing with an IT band injury just a few weeks before the meet. He and his father decided that he would go to Eugene if he could put together a few solid workouts without feeling pain. It was a risky decision, especially given the length of Lutkenhaus’ season, but they figured playing it safe could have been just as unfortunate.

“We wanted to kind of take it up to the last minute,” George said. “We didn’t want him sitting at home feeling good and being like, ‘I could have been there.’”

Now, Lutkenhaus is going to Tokyo. His school year starts in just a few weeks, so he’ll have to miss some school days for the meet. “Hopefully, the teachers will understand,” he joked.

Of course, he’ll be joined by Brazier, whose win would have been the story of the day had it not been for Lutkenhaus.

Brazier, the 2019 world champion, has enjoyed a momentous comeback over the past couple of months. After not having raced for three years, he made his season debut at the TOAD Fest in Nashville on June 7, running 1:44.70. Eight days later, he ran 1:43.80 at the Portland Track Festival, and at the London Diamond League on July 19, he ran 1:43.08 to truly announce his return to contention.

Heading into the meet, he was certainly viewed as a contender to make the team, but beating Hoppel and Hoey was somewhat of a longshot. In doing so, he put to bed any suspicions that he wasn’t his old self.

“The past few years have been really rough for me,” Brazier said. “So to finally have a chance at redemption and just showcase resiliency… I was really, really happy to do it today.”

Hoppel is also on the Tokyo squad after finishing third in 1:42.49, a season’s best. Improbably, Hoey missed out on making the team; he finished fourth in 1:43.06.

“About 150 to go,” Hoey said, “I realized I was in trouble. I couldn’t really upshift like you need to nowadays.”

Hoey was understandably disappointed with his performance, especially after the momentum he built heading into the meet. He took nearly two seconds off his personal best from a year prior (1:43.80) — which itself was much faster than his PB heading into the 2024 season (1:47.26) — over the course of the season. At the Monaco Diamond League on July 11, he ran 1:42.01, making him the second fastest man in the world in 2025 and the man to beat heading into USAs.

Despite his loss, he can still make the team with a win in the Diamond League final in Zurich on August 28. If he wins the 800 at that meet, he’ll be entered into Worlds as a wild card entrant.

Roisin Willis Keeps Dream Season Going In Women's Final

Going into the 2025 season, Stanford’s Roisin Willis didn’t have many expectations.

She hadn’t set a personal best in almost three years. By her account, she had gone through “the lowest of lows.”

“I feel like sometimes, the greatest fear is, ‘What if this happened?’” Willis said. “And it’s happened for me.”

The trials of the last few years, though, made her a stronger person, she said, and they paid off on Sunday. She surged in the last 100 meters of a tactical women’s 800 final and picked off three women, earning the national title with a time of 1:59.26. 

Trust was a major part of the race plan for Willis. She stuck to the rail for most of the second lap, even as her positioning started to look a little less optimal. 

“It was getting to a point where I was falling back, and I was seeing people more and more coming up on my outside, so I was like, ‘That spot will open up.’ It was just a matter of when, so I stayed patient, and then when I saw the moment, I knew I had to go.”

Willis moved from fourth to first over the last 100 meters, surging ahead of Meghan Hunter, Sage Hurta-Klecker, and Nia Akins. 

With her win, she is the first woman since 2007 to win both the NCAA and USA title in the women’s 800. Compared to her race at NCAAs, she said, she was a lot more confident today. 

“I think NCAAs was a big comeback race for me,” Willis said. “Not a lot of people expected me to win, but I think coming into this race, my goal was definitely to win this race.”

Part of what helped her was taking some pressure off of herself, she said.

“I was like, ‘You just gotta run,’” Willis said. “It’s not life or death, it’s track and field, so I just went out there to compete, and I had a lot of fun.”

Maggi Congdon, who just signed a pro conract with Nike out of Northern Arizona University, finished second thanks to her own big kick in the last 100 — she moved from sixth to second in the home stretch and finished in 1:59.39. Hurta-Klecker took third in 1:59.48.

None of the three have ever run at a senior global championship.