Sam Ruthe, 16, blasts 3:48.88 Mile at BU
Kiwi teen phenom also breaks legend John Walker's absolute New Zealand record of 3:49.08 from 1982
By Jonathan Gault, LetsRun.com
BOSTON — As he prepared to run the first indoor race of his life on Saturday afternoon, January 31, Sam Ruthe sat down with his father, Ben, and ran through some possible outcomes. One week earlier, the Ruthes had been in Whanganui, on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island, for the Cooks International Classic, where, on a pleasant summer evening, Sam had finished second in the Mile behind his training mate Sam Tanner. Ruthe’s time was 3:53.83, a world U18 best and the fastest Mile ever run by a 16-year-old.
That was the most recent data point available in forecasting Ruthe’s potential in the Mile at Saturday’s Boston University John Thomas Terrier Classic, but Ruthe is at a point in his career where he is improving so rapidly that analyzing recent performances is not altogether helpful. In the last three months, Ruthe has lowered his 800m personal best from 1:50.57 to 1:49.59 to 1:46.81 to 1:45.86, while his 3:53 was an improvement of more than four seconds on his previous best Mile.
Then there was the travel to consider. After driving five hours on Sunday back to their home in Tauranga, a coastal city in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty, the Ruthes had spent 50 hours traveling from the Kiwi summer into one of the harshest New England winters in several years, with Monday’s winter storm forcing them to make an unplanned 24-hour stopover in San Francisco on their way east.
Ruthe had managed a light workout of 6 x 200 meters at Harvard University’s indoor track on Thursday and a 30-minute shakeout around a parking garage on Friday to avoid the 23 inches of snow piled up around Boston’s streets. Still, his legs felt a bit heavy come race day.
On the other hand, Ruthe was about to run his first race at Boston University, the fastest indoor track in the world, against a field featuring the sort of depth and quality that is not available to him in domestic races in New Zealand.
Sam told Ben he thought running 3:56 would be a bad day. He felt that matching his time from Whanganui, 3:53, would be okay. Then they discussed a “blow your mind” number — a time that would require a great run but might be possible on a truly special day. Sam settled on 3:48.
World, consider your minds blown.
With frigid, 12-degree Fahrenheit temperatures outside, Ruthe cruised around BU’s launching pad of a track to run 3:48.88 and win the Mile at the Terrier Classic on Saturday. The time crushed Ruthe’s own age-16 and world U18 best, made him the youngest man ever under 3:50 — by more than a full year — and broke the legendary John Walker‘s 44-year-old absolute New Zealand record of 3:49.08, set outdoors in Oslo and shattered Nick Willis' national indoor record of 3:51.06 for 2016.
“I was coming into this race expecting to run sub-3:55,” Ruthe said. “I wasn’t even really expecting a PB. When I crossed the line and saw 3:48, I was a bit surprised myself.”
But that is all he was — a bit surprised. Ruthe’s 16-year-old face did not carry the sort of awestruck expression that usually accompanies a breakthrough of this magnitude. As he approached the finish line, he extended his right arm, clad in a blue and white Nike compression sleeve, and pointed to the stands, before raising the arm into the air, a single digit extended upward.
Ruthe was not collapsed on the track in exhaustion. He was not even bent over, trying to catch his breath. Ruthe made the rounds, shaking hands and posing for a couple of pictures. Within 60 seconds of crossing the finish line, he was conducting a post-race interview with FloTrack.
If you had not seen the previous eight laps, you would be hard-pressed to believe this was a human who had just run a Mile in 3:48. Let alone a 16-year-old.
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Full race video with post-race interview below
