Has there been a more exciting\u00a0prospect to come out of New\u00a0Zealand sport in recent history\u00a0than Sam Ruthe? <\/p>\n
The Tauranga\u00a0runner obliterated records at the\u00a0national secondary schools\u00a0championships recently, but his\u00a0times were not just good for a\u00a0schoolboy – they were world-leading, Kayla Hodge reports.<\/p>\n
Picture this.<\/p>\n
You are 16, and your life revolves around school, homework, spending time with your mates and maybe a part-time job after school.<\/p>\n
Then there is Sam Ruthe, who juggles life as a normal teenager while breaking records as a distance runner.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, aged 15, he became the youngest person to go under 4min in the mile, and he won the New Zealand senior men\u2019s 3000m title at the Potts Classic, becoming the youngest national men\u2019s champion in history.<\/p>\n
He then blitzed home in 3min 41.25sec in the 1500m at the Sir Graeme Douglas International meet, surpassing Norwegian Olympic champion and world record holder Jakob Ingebrigtsen\u2019s world-best time for a 15-year-old of 3min 42.44sec from 2016.<\/p>\n
Ruthe treated Dunedin spectators to something special at the national championships at the Caledonian in March.<\/p>\n
He finished the 1500m in 3min 44.31sec, the exact same time as Olympian Sam Tanner, for the pair to be crowned joint champions.<\/p>\n
Later that month, Ruthe \u2014 with Tanner pacing him \u2014 became the youngest person in the world to go under the 4min mark in the mile, clocking 3min 58.35sec.<\/p>\n
For context, Commonwealth Games champion Dick Tayler, who lives in Waikouaiti, held the world record for a 15-year-old for the mile \u2014 run on a grass track \u2014 with 4min 18.06sec in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
At the national secondary schools championships recently, Ruthe, now 16, shattered the senior boys 1500m record in 3min 38.62sec in the heats.<\/p>\n
He surpassed the previous record \u2014 held by former Commonwealth Games runner Richard Potts since 1989 \u2014 by 8sec. It also eclipsed the national under-20 and under-19 records held by Tanner, and Ruthe\u2019s own under-18 and under-17 marks.<\/p>\n
“I was really, really surprised because I thought I was just going to beat it by a couple of seconds, like two seconds or something,” Ruthe told RNZ.<\/p>\n
“I was just like, I\u2019ll head out a bit fast and get some extra room just in case I don\u2019t feel too good towards the last couple of laps, and I just kept going because I felt so good.”<\/p>\n
Ruthe, whose parents were national runners and whose grandparents were Olympians, followed up by winning the 800m title in 1min 46.81sec.<\/p>\n
His 800m and 1500m times would have won every Olympic gold medal in both distances until the mid-1950s, his 1500m time was faster than Olympic-winning performances by John Walker (1976), Fermin Cacho (1992) and Matthew Centrowitz (2016), and his 800m would have earned gold at the Commonwealth Games in 2022.<\/p>\n
Tayler raved about Ruthe and walked away inspired after speaking to the teenager in Dunedin earlier this year.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s in another league and it\u2019s wonderful for New Zealand athletics that we\u2019ve got guys like him, who\u2019ve come along and set a very high benchmark,” Tayler said.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s unreal, the times he\u2019s doing.”<\/p>\n
Tayler recalled international athletes coming to New Zealand in the 1960s for tougher competition and expected Ruthe\u2019s recent success could pique some interest.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s good for the track and field because we\u2019ve been so good in the field events \u2014 and we still want to maintain that \u2014 but when you get on the track, and middle distance and distance … if we can get some new blood coming along, I think it\u2019s absolutely fantastic.”<\/p>\n
Former national runner Paul Allison agreed and called Ruthe\u2019s times “borderline absurd”.<\/p>\n
Allison, who lives in Central Otago, recognised New Zealand produced special talent, but there was something different about Ruthe.<\/p>\n
“When a teenager is already breaking the glass ceiling on the world stage, you know you\u2019re looking at something truly rare,” Allison said.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re not talking about potential any more. We\u2019re talking about performances that already sit in Olympic and Diamond League territory.<\/p>\n
“When a 16-year-old is doing that, the normal rules just stop applying.<\/p>\n
“Becoming the youngest person in history to break 4min for the mile \u2014 before you\u2019re old enough to drive \u2014 is a global milestone, not a junior one.”<\/p>\n
Ruthe now has his eye on becoming the fastest 16-year-old in the 1500m and will travel to New York early next year for indoor competitions.<\/p>\n
And what does Ruthe think about on the track?<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t think about much at all, to be honest \u2014 it\u2019s just all empty brain.”\u00a0\u2014 Additional reporting RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has there been a more exciting\u00a0prospect to come out of New\u00a0Zealand sport in recent history\u00a0than Sam Ruthe? The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-190247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}