‘Great things have been happening ever since I believed in myself’

It’s not uncommon for an athlete to take a break from their sport. But in the case of U.S. hurdler Cordell Tinch, that break was so complete that he couldn’t even recall where he had stored his track clothes.

“It took me 30 minutes to find my spikes,” he said in a press conference the day before the beginning of the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. “I had nothing to do with track at the time. The only athletic thing I did was to go to our local YMCA and play basketball once a week.”

Tinch had always been a promising multi-sport athlete and headed to college to play football and run track. However, when COVID hit in 2020, he found himself at a crossroads.

Knowing that he would be distracted if he returned home, he asked his school if he could continue to live on campus. When the answer came back that it wasn’t an option, he gave up on being an athlete completely.

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For the next two years, Tinch worked odd jobs as he sought to make a life for himself away from the athletics track, and it wasn’t until December 2022 that he returned to the world of sport.

But despite admitting that he doesn’t think he was “a very happy person” during his self-enforced exile, he looks back now and credits that time with making him the athlete he is today.

“I was going through a whole bunch of things,” he said. “A lot of people around me were like, ‘You shouldn’t be working here, you’re supposed to be doing this, you’re supposed to be doing that,’ and it’s really hard to believe what other people are saying when you don’t believe it yourself.

“So to be able to come back to the sport and see how much I’ve missed it and find that happiness again was really, really big for me. And great things have been happening ever since I took that step and believed in myself.”

A father's challenge begins Tinch’s journey to fastest hurdler in the world this year

In the end, the spark for Tinch to return to track came from some gentle banter with his father.

While sitting on the couch watching the 2020 NCAA Outdoor Championships, Tinch senior turned to his son and said, “You know, I just don’t think you got it no more”.

Buoyed by the challenge, Tinch found his spikes, went straight to track and ran a 13.27-second 110m hurdles.

It took another two years for the Wisconsin native to come back to athletics full-time after a friend recommended him to a coach at Pittsburg State in Kansas.

However, the transition wasn’t an easy one. At first, Tinch felt like an imposter.

But after lining up for his first race under his new coach, the feeling changed instantly to one of belonging.

“When the gun went off, that’s when I knew, I’m where I’m supposed to be,” he said.

Tinch’s rise since that day in 2023 to today has been sensational. He arrives at these world championships with a time of 12.87 seconds — the fastest in the world this year.

The 110m hurdles competition in Tokyo is expected to be a phenomenal battle, with Paris 2024 Olympic champion and three-time world championships gold medallist Grant Holloway finally showing small signs of fragility this season after years of absolute dominance.

Yet whatever happens, Tinch’s journey has been as much about discovering his true self as rediscovering his love for sport.

“Going home and working in paper factories, in cellphone stores, in moving companies, it was all fun,” he said. “But at the same time, I think that finding myself was the biggest part of all that.”

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