Grant Holloway Rips 12.86 to Win Olympic Trials 110 Hurdles as 3 Men Break 13.00 For the First Time in One Race

EUGENE, Ore. – They call it “the hardest team to make,” and in the sprint events, it is usually true: finishing in the top three at the US Olympic Trials typically requires being one of the 10 best in the world in your event.

But in the men’s 110-meter hurdle final on Friday night at Hayward Field, “hardest team to make” did not do it justice. Try “hardest podium to make.”

At any meet. 

Ever.

When Grant Holloway (12.86), Freddie Crittenden (12.93), and Daniel Roberts (12.96) crossed the finish line tonight, it represented the first time in history that three men had broken 13 seconds in the same race. Cordell Tinch finished 4th in 13.03, a time that would have been enough to earn the silver medal at every Olympics ever contested. There are only three men in the world who have run faster than Tinch in 2024. Unfortunately for him, they were the three men who beat him tonight.

“That’s the hardest event here to make the team, is the hurdles on the men’s side,” Tinch said. “You can’t really be surprised about seeing what we just saw.”

Tinch’s 13.03 was the fastest fourth-place time in history; Texas A&M’s JaQualon Scott ran 13.09, the fastest fifth-placer in history, and Cameron Murray (13.15) and Michael Dickson (13.21) were tied for the fastest sixth- and seventh-placers in history. In any other country, they would all be Olympians. In the United States, home of nine of the 10 fastest hurdlers in the world in 2024, they will be forced to watch the Olympics from their couches.

Results

Holloway leads historically deep race

With temperatures in the mid-70s, a friendly tailwind (+2.0 m/s, the maximum allowable), and a fast track that had already seen a plethora of quick times earlier on Friday, conditions at Hayward Field were as good as they get, and a stacked field took advantage. Holloway, as usual, got off to a fast start, but he could not gain his usual separation. Not because he was running slowly, but because the rest of the field was running so fast.

Uncharacteristically, Holloway clipped hurdle 8 — he said he could not recall the last time he hit one during the race — but still held on to run 12.86, the fourth-fastest time in history. Holloway celebrated in typical fashion, calling on the screaming Hayward crowd to make even more noise before catching a Viva Tequila Seltzer from a fan in the stands — Holloway is almost as good at honoring his sponsors as he is at hurdling — before grabbing a young fan named Chase from the stands to celebrate with him on the track. Chase has been cheering on Holloway at big meets since 2018. How did they first meet?

“Same way I met everyone else: me talking too damn much,” Holloway said.

Indeed, the personable Holloway is closest thing track & field has to a mayor, but when the starter calls the hurdle field to its blocks, he morphs into a cold-blooded assassin.

“My main thing is, going each race with the mentality I’m gonna kill whoever’s beside me, regardless if they’re my best friend or my brothers or not,” Holloway said. “And when I get to the finish line, I’ll shake their hand.”

So far in 2024, Holloway has been untouchable. During the indoor season, he lowered his own world record in the 60-meter hurdles to 7.27 seconds and repeated as World Indoor champion. Outdoors, Holloway entered the Trials as the undefeated world leader at 13.03 and proceeded to run 12.92 in the prelims, 12.96 in the semis, and 12.86 in the final in Eugene — the first time in history a runner had broken 13.00 in all three rounds of a meet. That is the same number of sub-13.00s as Olympic champion Hansle Parchment of Jamaica has managed in his entire life.

Holloway said he tries not to get caught up about where his accomplishments place him historically — “I’ll let you guys write the articles about who’s running fast and who’s not,” he told a scrum of reporters after the race — but he currently occupies some extremely rare air. His 69-race win streak in the 60m hurdles, spanning more than 10 years, is Edwin Moses-esque, in length if not volume. His run tonight made him the only man in history to have broken 12.90 twice, and moved him into a tie with his idol David Oliver with nine career sub-13.00s — two behind Allen Johnson‘s all-time record of 11.

Yet Holloway, who has won World Outdoor titles in 2019, 2022, and 2023, entered the 2021 Olympics in a very similar place as this summer — undefeated, world record indoors, fast time at the US Trials (12.81 in the semis) and left with a silver medal, run down late by Parchment in his only defeat in a global championship as a professional. Olympic gold is the goal he is chasing, one of the few he has still yet to achieve (Aries Merritt‘s 12.80 world record is the other). At 26, he believes now is the time to do it.

“I was young, dumb, and full of cum back in 2021,” Holloway said, channeling John C. McGinley in Point Break. “One of the things now is I’m a little bit more mature. I have a little bit more experience and races under my belt.”

Roberts & Crittenden round out the team

Holloway needed to run fast tonight because he was pushed by Freddie Crittenden and Daniel Roberts, both of whom joined the sub-13.00 club tonight. And for both men, it was a long time coming.

Roberts’ rivalry with Holloway dates back to college when he was at Kentucky and Holloway was at Florida, and until tonight Roberts’ pb remained the 13.00 he had run in the legendary 2019 NCAA final in Austin when Holloway ran 12.98 to break Renaldo Nehemiah‘s 40-year-old collegiate record.

“When I saw the first two, I was like, I know mine’s [under 13.00] because I was right there,” Roberts said. “I would have been so mad if that said 13.0 anything.”

Roberts was snakebitten early in his professional career. At the 2019 Worlds, he was DQ’d after hitting a competitor’s hurdle. At the 2021 Olympics, he missed the final by .01 of a second. And at the 2022 Worlds, Roberts hit a hurdle and fell. After that season, he switched coaches to Allen Johnson and was rewarded with his first world medal, a bronze in Budapest last year. He will be looking for more in Paris.

Crittenden, 29, thought he was done with the sport three years ago. Though Crittenden was 4th at NCAAs for Syracuse in 2016, he did not make it to the NCAA championships as a senior in 2017. He improved each year — from 13.48 in 2016 to 13.42 in 2017, 13.27 in 2018, and 13.17 in 2019 — but Crittenden missed out on making the 2019 Worlds team by .01 to Devon Allen. And, cruel as it is, if you are not making World teams in the hurdles, it is tough to find a sponsor in the US.

“As a young guy, I was banking on I’m going to run fast and I’m going to make the team and I’m going to make some money,” Crittenden said. “Five years down the road and the money’s not coming in, you’ve gotta figure something out.”

In Crittenden’s seven years since graduating from Syracuse, he has never had a shoe contract, relying on apparel company Tracksmith to provide him with gear and cover some of his racing expenses. To make ends meet, Crittenden has also worked at GameStop, a warehouse, a substitute teacher, and most recently an after-school program with kids in Phoenix, where he trains under Tim O’Neil, the coach at Grand Canyon University. Crittenden finished 4th at the 2023 World Championships; if he ran in a different event or represented a different country, he would have been sponsored for years. But it’s tough out there for American 110-meter hurdlers.

Crittenden almost reached his breaking point in 2021. He had strained both hamstrings the year before in Doha and the injury was just not healing. When he exited that year’s Olympic Trials after running 13.63 in the semifinals, he kissed the track, knowing his first competition on the new Hayward Field might also be his last. He still keeps the picture of that moment on his phone as a reminder.

“I was this close to giving it up,” Crittenden said. “I was broke, didn’t make any money at all that year and didn’t make it out of semis, I was saying goodbye, because I knew I can’t do this anymore.”

But Crittenden’s teammates and his wife, Tor, would not let him quit. The injury had blinded his optimism. They helped restore his vision.

“They knew I loved it so much I wasn’t ready to be done,” Crittenden said. “I was bitter, I was hurt. It was just a very low point for me.”

Now, in one fell swoop, Crittenden is an Olympian, a sub-13.00 man, and one-third of the fastest team the United States has ever sent to the Olympic Games.

“Honestly I’m still in shock,” Crittenden said. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened. It’s an amazing feeling to come out and accomplish what I’ve been trying to accomplish for the past 17 years of running track…This is one of the defining moments of not even just my career, but my life.”

Grant Holloway post-race interview

Freddie Crittenden post-race interview

Daniel Roberts post-race interview

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