Auburn's Ja'Kobe Tharp stuns with out-of-nowhere 110 hurdles world record

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Auburn's Ja'Kobe Tharp stuns with out-of-nowhere 110 hurdles world record originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Ja'Kobe Tharp entered Wednesday night as a high-end hurdler.

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He ended the night as an all-time legend.

The Auburn University standout was the 32nd-fastest man in the 110-meter hurdles, with a personal best of 13.01 seconds.

Then he ran it in 12.75 seconds, an out-of-nowhere world record.

It makes pretty much no sense. Tharp wasn't even running a final at the NCAA Championships. He set the mark in the semis.

The world record had stood since 2012, when Aries Merritt set it at 12.80 seconds to win the Olympics.

Tharp now hurdled his way immediately into the conversation of track's rising stars.

You can tell in the video above that he couldn't quite believe he ran that fast. No one could.

"I knew I had that in my legs," Tharp told reporters after the race. "But it wasn't on my bingo card before this meet, not at all."

The hurdles is a fascinating race, because so much of it is down to rhythm.

Yes, you have to be fast. Yes, you have to be athletic and have good timing over the hurdles.

But really, once you get the hurdles down, they're more of a musical act.

Each step should come exactly on time.

Each hurdle should be cleared in just the right way.

A perfect hurdles race includes no slight missteps. This was a perfect hurdles race.

That's how Tharp ran a quarter-second faster than he had ever run before. He ran this race like Mozart may have composed a symphony.

"I was going pretty fast," Tharp said afterward. "The last three hurdles were kind of iffy. I was like, 'Whoa, I'm coming up kind of fast.' I thought maybe 12.97 or 12.98 and match the speed record. But to see that, it was like, 'Ahhhh.' I'm speechless, seriously."

The word "unbelievable" is overused in sports.

This was unbelievable.

Tharp, in a semifinal heat, ran the fastest sprint hurdles race ever run. 

History made in a moment that absolutely no one saw it coming.

Tharp now finds himself in eternal Auburn lore, and quickly into the ranks of the world track elite. It'll be tough to ever top that.

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