{"id":297868,"date":"2026-02-23T08:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T08:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/297868\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T08:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T08:52:08","slug":"sam-ruthe-completes-u20-grand-slam-to-hold-all-nz-middle-distance-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/297868\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Ruthe completes U20 grand slam to hold all NZ middle distance records"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGoing into the race I didn\u2019t know what to expect because it\u2019s been a long season, but we did a good job at maintaining that base.\u201d<\/p>\n

The race was won by Ernest Cheruiyot in 7m 40.53s.<\/p>\n

The record completes a successful trip to the US for Ruthe, where he put himself in contention to compete at the upcoming Commonwealth Games<\/a> by beating the A and B standards for the mile.<\/p>\n

Competing in Glasgow was a long shot at the start of the year, but after Ruthe ran the fastest-ever mile by a New Zealander<\/a> in 3m 48.88s, beating the record held by Sir John Walker for 44 years, he catapulted into contention.<\/p>\n

New Zealand has 18 allocated quota spots for the Commonwealth Games, which run from July 23 to August 2, and the decision on who gets to compete rests with the New Zealand Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n

Ruthe also intends to compete in the Under-20 World Championships, scheduled to take place days after the Commonwealth Games in Oregon.<\/p>\n

His dad, Ben Ruthe, felt his son has plenty of newfound confidence from his three races overseas. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really proud of him,\u201d Ben Ruthe said. \u201cThe way he has focused on the job at hand, he\u2019s taking lessons on and he\u2019s surprised himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the second race he learned lots from competing against Cole Hocker, he took those lessons and applied those to the 3000m race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam Ruthe will now return home and will have one race in New Zealand, at the Track Stars meet on March 7 in Auckland.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Sam Tanner managed to complete the mile race at the same venue, but struggled with the Achilles injury he suffered last month. Tanner finished 11th in his heat and 27th overall with a time of 4m 3.55s.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, 2025 World Indoor representative Alison Andrews-Paul raced in the elite section of the women\u2019s 800m, finishing in third in 2m 1.42s, and Thomas Cowan was just 0.01s off his own NZ Indoor 800m record, clocking 1m 46.84s to finish fourth in his heat.<\/p>\n

Sam Ruthe\u2019s complete bag of under-20 records:<\/p>\n

800m \u2013 1:45.861000m \u2013 2:17.821500m \u2013 3:33.25Mile \u2013 3:48.88 (NZ mile record)3000m \u2013 7:43.165000m \u2013 13:40.48<\/p>\n

Ben Francis<\/a> is an Auckland-based reporter for the New Zealand Herald who covers breaking sports news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGoing into the race I didn\u2019t know what to expect because it\u2019s been a long season, but we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[24824,164063,110698,164062,5263,5432,45786,5907,111654,53449,14768,10813,28162,10110,111,139,69,1974,9090,8808,110304,18460,10814,213,2737,10706,61,164061,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-297868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-3000m","9":"tag-5000m","10":"tag-800m","11":"tag-agegrade","12":"tag-all","13":"tag-between","14":"tag-capturing","15":"tag-completed","16":"tag-completes","17":"tag-distance","18":"tag-every","19":"tag-grand","20":"tag-hold","21":"tag-middle","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-record","26":"tag-records","27":"tag-running","28":"tag-ruthe","29":"tag-sam","30":"tag-slam","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-star","33":"tag-teenage","34":"tag-to","35":"tag-u20","36":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297868","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=297868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}