Eleven teenagers won medals at the British Indoor Championships in Birmingham, including the multi-talented Thea Brown and triple jumpers Tito Odunaike and Leila Newt.
Young athletes such as sprinter Gout Gout of Australia, 800m runner Cooper Lutkenhouse of the United States and miler Sam Rutte of New Zealand have recently made headlines in the sport due to their precocious abilities and outstanding performances. American track fans call them “teenage phenoms,” and part of the enduring appeal is the question of whether they’ll go on to become global superstars or simply fade into semi-obscurity.
Athletes seem to be excelling more and more at younger ages and that was evident at the UK Indoor Championships this month.
In total, the teenage athletes won medals in 11 events in Birmingham, and that includes gold for the 16-year-old and bronze for just the 15-year-old, both in the triple jump.
They are as follows:
Men’s triple jump – Tito Odunaike, gold, 16 years
Women’s high jump – Thea Brown, silver, 18
Men’s 400m – Harry Bradley, silver, 19:00
Men’s high jump – Regan Corin, silver, 18
Men’s long jump – Daniel Emegbor bronze, 17
Men’s triple jump – Henry Harley, bronze, 17
Women’s 800m – King Sheikira, bronze, 17:00
Women’s 60m hurdles – Thea Brown, bronze, 18:00
Women’s triple jump – Leila Newt, bronze, 15:00
Men’s 3000m walk – Fraser Higginson, bronze, 18:00
Women’s 60m – Madeline Down, gold, 18; Rebecca Scott, silver, 19:00
The men’s triple jump was particularly notable with 16-year-old Odunaike at one point leading two 17-year-olds, Harley Henry and Sean-Connor Atafo, before 26-year-old veteran Jude Bright-Davies pounced for silver.
Gold medals were also won by athletes barely out of their teens, such as 20-year-old Renee Regis in the women’s 200m and Daniel Goriola, also 20, in the men’s 60m hurdles. Furthermore, in the women’s 60m, Nell Desire, aged just 17, finished fourth.
“Extraordinary,” was how Cohn described Lutkenhaus’ 1:42.27 for the 16-year-old 800m when asked about him by the world athletics president in December. “It’s happening in a lot of sports right now. Several Premier League teams recently fielded two 15-year-olds and one of them made such an impact that he won the game in the dying minutes.
“You just have to accept that there’s some outstanding talent and it’s coming in younger than they’ve probably been in the past and that’s probably a testament to good quality coaching.”
Coe added: “One word of caution is the biggest challenge and the highest attrition period is the 16-17 age group for seniors. The sobering statistic we’ve always looked at is that most athletes who even win medals at junior world titles don’t even make their senior national team two or three years later.
“So to deal with those athletes when they show such amazing talent at such an unexpected age, you can sit back and celebrate that, but it also creates really big challenges for the coaching structure and sometimes the parenting network for you to continue that progression. We don’t want them to look back at 40 and say ‘yeah, I was really good for one season.’
Hobbs Kessler, the American miler who was fifth in the Olympic 1,500m in Paris, told Track & Field News this month.
“I know I’ve been the benefactor of it, but being associated with a prodigy feels like a really big deal. I feel like I almost got more attention in high school when I promised to do what I’m doing now. People who have medal prospects are more exciting to fans than people who actually win medals.
“I think it’s weird and I don’t think it’s super healthy to focus on what you’re running at any age. I think it should be consistent at your peak. I realize how exciting it is, but I don’t know why. It’s crazy.”
Many studies have been done on why teenage athletes either thrive or hit a brick wall when they reach their 20s. One theory is that athletes who often placed second or third in their youth will be hungrier to make it, while teenagers who always win easily will be complacent.
As any seasoned coach or longtime track and field fan knows, however, junior success does not guarantee senior success in the future. For every Usain Bolt, there are countless teenage ‘phenoms’, ‘talents’ and ‘prodigies’ who fall by the wayside in the notoriously difficult transition to the senior ranks.
One of the most dramatic examples comes from the 2002 World Under-20 Championship in Jamaica. Running on home soil and just a month shy of his 16th birthday, Usain Bolt won the 200m. The women’s 200m winner at those same championships, however, Britain’s Vernicha James, competed for two more seasons before packing up due to injuries and disappointment.
The first European Under-20 Championship I covered AW: in Riga in 1999 The golden girl of the championships was German sprinter Sina Schilke after winning the 100m, 200m and 4x100m titles during a hot day in the Latvian capital.
Although she ran slightly faster in 2001-2002, it’s fair to say she didn’t reach the same heights as the senior sprinter and instead appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine in 2005.
Go back in time and Kirk Dumpleton beat Steve Ovett and Seb Coe in the same race to win the 1972 English Schools Crown Cup and he ran well for a few years, although obviously not at the same level as Ovett and Coe.
Back in Britain, Emily Pidgeon was dubbed ‘the new Paula Radcliffe’ and her many junior victories included the European Junior 5000m title just weeks after her 16th birthday and a few weeks after winning the London Olympics in July 2005. AW: cover several times in his youth, including at age 12 (below). As he moved into the senior ranks, he continued to post times that most athletes would kill for, but she hung up her spikes in 2014, aged just 24.
In 2016 ex AW: editor Mel Whatman has done his own survey of young athletes’ statistics, looking at what happened to the 90 winners of the 2006 English Schools’ Track and Field titles.
A decade later, when the athletes were aged 24 to 29 and at the peak of their careers, Whatman found that only 11 of the 42 winners of the girls’ event and 8 of the 48 winners of the boys’ event had earned a senior international vest.
However, the problem with many of today’s teenagers is that they are already reaching the big leagues or winning national titles, as last week’s results in Birmingham show.
Look out for the March issue of AW magazine, which features an in-depth interview with Sam Ruthe and an interview with Tito Odunaike.
