INSPIRATION RARELY STRIKES in an elevator. However, hurdler Cordell Tinch back in April found that for him it had — on a Chinese hotel elevator, in fact. Take it where you find it, right? Use it as needed. Hopefully in Tokyo.
At the time of this writing, Tinch leads the ‘25 world list at 12.87 as his event’s =No. 4 all-time performer. In mid-August, 30 days ahead of the WC heats, he took down man-to-beat Grant Holloway 13.03–13.15 at the Chorzów Diamond League. The win was Tinch’s third DL victory in 5 starts this season and raised his seasonal record versus Holloway to 2–0. He also placed 2nd at the Rome and Monaco circuit stops.
Yet back in this season’s early days, Tinch was best known for his explosive ’23 breakout from the Div. II ranks to the big time — and not just in racing over the sticks. You’ll remember his 2-day performance as a Pittsburg State soph at the MIAA Championships: 13.07 with a 2.8 wind on Saturday plus a 27-½w (8.24) long jump. The next day he high jumped 7-1¾ (2.18) — though he’d gone 7-3¼ (2.22) at conference indoors. He capped his day with a 12.97w flight of hurdles.
At the Div. III nationals he added a windy — really windy, 6.0mps — 12.87 time, which he followed up with a wind-legal 12.96. The former cell phone sales rep was for real and showed it placing 2nd to Daniel Roberts at the ‘23 USATF. He earned a USAs long jump 5th, as well. His out-of-the-blue year ended credibly on the elite stage with a Worlds semis appearance (non-advancing 4th) and 7th-place finishes in two September DL meets, Xiamen and the Final in Eugene.
Inaugural pro seasons are often tricky patches to navigate, as Tinch’s in the Olympic year of ‘24 proved to be. He missed out on Paris with his 4th-place OT finish. In that final, he had clocked 13.03 in the first-ever 110H clash to see three hurdlers under 13.00, yet at least he gained valuable elite experience racing in 10 DLs with a best placing of 2nd in Xiamen, a 3rd-place run in Monaco and a 4th-place result in the Final.
Flash ahead to that elevator ride in April. Actually, make that rides, plural — in Tinch’s hotel before the Xiamen DL. Up and down he rode multiple times. Each time the lift door closed, there it was, a video screen replaying his runner-up finish in the ’24 Xiamen edition. Daniel Roberts had bested him there, 13.11–13.17. No fun at all to watch on replay for a 24-year-old targeting his first DL series win.
For Tinch it played worse than elevator music, yet it lit the fuse for his 12.87 statement in Shanghai the next week.
Tinch remembers his irritation. “I had told our agent that travels with us, [Robbie Hughes of Doyle Management], ‘I’m going to win both of these meets’ — both of the spring DL meets in China, that is.
“And he asked, ‘Why?’
“‘Because in the elevator, they’re showing the meet from last year and I always see myself losing.’ I said, ‘I refuse to do this again.’”
Promise kept. This time around in Xiamen, Tinch scored his first career DL win, 13.06–13.14 over Japan’s Rachid Muratake. The race also delivered Tinch’s first win over 4-time World No. 1 Holloway, who had bested him 9–0 since their first meeting, coincidentally at Xiamen in ’23. This time Holloway raced in the pack until hurdle 10 and then jogged, grimacing, from there to the finish for a rare last-place result (in an also rare 10-hurdler contest).
A week later Tinch put up his statement time in Shanghai, 0.23 ahead of Muratake with Olympic bronze medalist Rasheed Broadbell 3rd in 13.24.
“I think we’re just scratching the surface of this season,” Tinch said at the time. He still thinks so — and his conviction carries with it calm self-assurance that he and coach Kyle Rutledge, Pitt State’s T&F director, are on track.
Yes, Tinch placed 2nd to precocious Ja’Kobe Tharp at the USA Champs. The result didn’t thrill him yet he’d made the Tokyo team and 2 hours before the final had delivered on his other goal for the day: he had out-hurdled Holloway in their semi meeting.
The evening before that, Tinch, smiling and cool as a cucumber, appeared at T&FN’s Trials Tour dinner and shared his thoughts.
Was it not remarkable that he spent the evening prior to the crucial USATF rounds shaking hands and posing for selfies in a hotel banquet room with a group of super-fans? We asked him about that.
“I mean, my approach to all meets is the same,” he said. “I like to be loose and relaxed, therefore there’s no need to show up to places and be all stressed because I think it adds extra nervousness. So I like to always just be relaxed and go with the flow.”
Tinch was asked on stage in front of the T&FN Tour members to talk about working his way through the Nationals test. He had already eased through his heat a few hours before. It’s always a pleasure to hear analytical athletes talk about thinking on their feet; so it was with Tinch.
Before his heat in Eugene, he recalled that, “Going into the call room, I knew that Daniel [Roberts] wasn’t going to run. And then before they let us go, I realized I hadn’t seen Robert Dunning yet. So I knew there’s two people already not running. We were only gonna eliminate two people. Therefore, everybody makes it.
“So, our goal was just to go out, execute the first few hurdles, then make sure we have a clean race and kinda coast through the rest of it. And that’s what I went out and did.
“But it’s gonna be completely different tomorrow because I have a little bit of, I guess, a chip on my shoulder knowing that Grant’s probably not going to run the final but he’s in my semifinal. I don’t want to let him win. That’s just what it comes down to.
“But it has nothing to do with him. It’s all to do with me. I just want to win because I know how people talk and how things are. Even if I was to go win the final, it’s still gonna be, ‘Well, Grant didn’t run in the final’ and this and that. Therefore, you can’t say that if I was to win the semifinal and then was to win the final. So that’s my plan tomorrow is go out, have two good races, go execute all the things I know I can and show the world why I’m one of the best.”
While it was gifted Auburn soph Tharp who starred as upsetter in the final with a 13.01 PR, 0.02 ahead of Tinch, the pair chest-bumped with exhilaration after the finish. Tharp was also Tokyo-bound and had accomplished part 1 of his plan for the afternoon, as our news story noted:
“Holloway got out fast in the semi, but Tinch walked him down over the last 5 hurdles to beat him 13.11–13.18.”
With a win at the Budapest CT since Eugene and the “W” over Holloway in Chorzów 4 days later, Tinch, so far, is executing the late summer he has planned.
With the all-important World Champs now a mid-September target — a high summer fixture no more — Tinch, by design, has alternated intense periods of training and racing with days, even a week or two here or there, laid back off the gas pedal.
He says, “You kinda relax a little bit and just kinda find yourself again because sometimes as we run — I mean, I trained this year from November, hopefully, all the way until September — to know that track is your life for that entire time, sometimes you just gotta take a week to just step back and get all the way away from it. And when you get back to it, you’re even better. So we’ve had a few more breaks throughout the season, especially seeing that we were in 12.8 shape in May.
“But at the same time, we’re trying to maintain and keep the fitness, keep the race rhythm all throughout the year.”
Tinch wants it to be a world champion’s cadence. Holloway’s dominating string of recent-season international championships race times — 13.03 at Eugene ’22, 12.96 at Budapest ’23 and 12.99 at the Paris Olympics —have all played out with a rhythm Tinch comes prepared to dance to.
His eye-opener time from Shanghai is in the same sub-12.90 zip code as the 12.81 PR Holloway knocked out at the ’21 Olympic Trials.
In any case, Tinch feels races are all pretty much the same, matters of technical excellence more than 100ths on the clock, once an athlete reaches the zone in which the world’s elite operate.
Of the 12.87, he says, “As far as how it felt, I mean, it just feels a little faster, but I don’t really notice a difference in a 13-oh race versus a 12.9 versus a 12.8. They all feel essentially the same to me because I’m working on executing the same things.”
What’s most important among those things? Crossing the finish line first.
