TWO SURPRISES were in store for 16-year-old New Zealand middle-distance sensation Sam Ruthe, his father Ben and his coach, Craig Kirkwood, when they returned to Boston to complete their nearly month-long East Coast odyssey.
In conjunction with last Sunday’s Saucony Battle for Boston at BU (February 22), the Ruthe contingent was greeted by a welcoming band of fellow Kiwi distance talents, primarily current and recent U.S. collegians — including ’24 NCAA 1500 champ Maia Ramsden, standout Providence alum Kimberley May and others.
“I really didn’t know there were that many Kiwis here and all of them are so good and doing so well,” said Sam. “I think we all felt pretty connected… It was like being at a local New Zealand track meet.”
Ruthe sure put on a show for his compatriots, as well as all followers of the sport who have marveled at the youth who began his sojourn with a mind-bending 3:48.88 mile at the Terrier Classic on January 31. He continued two weeks later at the Sound Invite (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) with a 3:52.46 behind Cole Hocker’s AR. Then came a return to the BU base and a stab at the WYR for 3K of 7:38.04. He couldn’t quite sustain that tempo, but his reward was a PR 7:43.16.
The other “surprise” was certainly forecast as the Ruthes returned to Beantown, but they didn’t arrive in the States last month necessarily expecting to wind up in a Nor’easter that dumped more than 17 inches on the city.
The storm’s peak was late enough Sunday to allow the meet to take place, but what they woke up to Monday was a sight to behold for a troupe that hails from the New Zealand coastal city of Tauranga, which never sees more than a trace of snow. They had already had their incoming travel delayed by the aftermath of an even bigger snowstorm at the end of January.
Ben Ruthe admitted the white stuff was one of the coolest parts of the trip, off the track. “The amount of snow that we trudged through today to go to the supermarket… you know, it was pretty fun,” he laughed, shaking his head in wonder. “The boys have made an igloo and been playing outside.”
The Kiwi reunion and subsequent winter wonderland were great reminders that some of the best things about our sport are the people you meet and the places you get to go.
But of course, the sport is also about the meteoric talents that rise up from almost everywhere on the planet, and Ruthe — along with Americans like Cooper Lutkenhaus and Quincy Wilson — is at the very top of the list.
Ruthe’s proverbial “shot heard ‘round the world,” was the 3:48 at the Terrier. With near-perfect pacing and support from countryman Sam Tanner and others in the race, he executed flawlessly and finished winded, but hardly exhausted.
The volume of superlatives Sam’s performance generated was endless. But perhaps the most profound, especially to Kiwis and older T&F aficionados, is this: Ruthe smashed his country’s national record for the mile. Not the U18 record, not the U20 record – but the 3:49.08 that the legendary Sir John Walker ran 44 years ago. Walker, of course, ushered in the sub-3:50 era with his famed 3:49.4 in 1975, ahead of his ’76 Olympics 1500 gold in Montréal. Walker’s PR, though, came in 1982 in Oslo’s Dream Mile behind AR-setter Steve Scott — part of a golden era of miling in the early ’80s. (Continued below)
T&FN Reboot: John Walker’s Epic ’75 Season
From the perspective of 51 years on, it’s hard to fully appreciate the impact of the not-yet-an-Olympic-gold-medalist New Zealander who raced to history’s first sub-3:50 mile (3:49.4). Sure, Walker had rivals, but he alone operated from the 349 zip code for 3 years and 11 months until Seb Coe at last lowered the WR to 3:49.0.
In 1975 in a world where the 4-minute barrier had fallen only 31 years earlier, 3:49 read almost like a number from another galaxy — a galaxy Down Under.
Walker, of course, improved his PR 7 years later to the 3:49.08 NZ absolute standard Ruthe has taken down. Even so, T&FN’s account of the charismatic Kiwi’s 1975 Athlete Of The Year season, written by the late Jon Hendershott, remains a fascinating read to this day. You will find it here.
The sense of history is lost on none of the Ruthes or Kirkwood. They have been honored by the recognition that Walker, now 74, has afforded Sam with congratulations multiple times on his Facebook page.
“The way the race played out couldn’t have been better,” said Ruthe of his first-ever indoor experience at Terrier. “It gave me confidence that I can run against some of the best runners in the world, but looking back I had the benefit of a very smooth run.
“Sound Running at JDL was a totally different experience. When I look back on that race I was put on the outside with Cole, his training partner and his two pacemakers. I’ve really benefited in the past from pacemakers and teammates and that was a situation where I was on the other side of that. They all got ahead and it took a long time to work up the outside to pass Cooper Teare… It taught me that I need to find the rail in a fast race.
“But each race will be different and I would never have got a race like that at home, so it was perfect for learning.… I can’t make assumptions and need to work through a range of ways a race can play out, so I’m better prepared to run the right race in the circumstances.”
The trip was actually the Ruthes’ third to the U.S. He was invited to run in the Arcadia Invitational 3200 last April, where he finished a very competitive 3rd in 8:43.57 behind American preps Owen Powell and Josiah Tostenson, and just ahead of Tayvon Kitchen in a field of 38.
Then he returned in July to Eugene for the Prefontaine Classic. He ran 4:00.65 for 13th in the non-DL section, but then roared back a week later in a Sunset Tour 1500 section in California to run a 3:39.17.
So what inspired this latest winter (NZ summer) trip?
“Craig would probably say that I probably overplan a little bit… I’ve started planning Sam’s northern summer 2027 schedule already,” Ben laughs, acknowledging that’s part of his job as an insurance advisor. “While I do the planning, I don’t make any of the [racing] decisions. So my role really is to throw up ideas and opportunities.”
Multiple generations of outstanding runners on both sides of the Ruthe family have helped fuel Sam’s success. Ben ran 3:41 for 1500, and both he and Sam’s mother, Jessica, were national champs in middle-long distances. But it goes beyond that. Jessica’s father, Trevor Wright ran 2:12:29 in the 1983 London Marathon for 9th place. Her mother, Rosemary Wright, ran 2:00.15 for New Zealand in the 1972 Olympics for 7th place.
“He’s clearly very talented, but I think it’s so easy to say that he’s successful because of some sort of genetic lottery that he won,” confides Ben. “I think there’s so much more to it than that. We’ve just got the best support network in the world… and we’ve got the best coach in the world one kilometer away and an incredible group of people to train with.”
As a child, Sam gravitated toward many sports, especially rugby and swimming. It was only at the “normal school track and running events” where Sam showed undeniable abilities. Ben had known Coach Kirkwood (the 13th-place finisher in the ’01 Chicago Marathon) for years, and the latter has always been firm about holding off formal athletics training until they reach high school age.
Ruthe’s first performance to really show his incredible potential was an 8:09.68 in a New Zealand club meet in November 2024. The following March, he became the first 15-year-old to break 4:00 for a mile at 3:58.35.
This year, a week before the trip began, Sam improved to 3:53.83. After they’d survived 50 hours of travel and reached Boston, the Ruthes and Kirkwood mused that a sub-3:50 just might be possible on the blazing fast BU oval.
“I’m really happy the way that the whole tour went,” says Sam. “The people we have met have made it an incredible few weeks.”
His father adds, “Everyone has gone out of their way to help us out and been super friendly, in Boston and at JDL.”
The tour was part of the big picture for the rest of Sam’s 2026 season and beyond.
“I think Craig really concentrates on getting the pieces of the puzzle together and that is really what 2026 will be about,” he says. “I have to be at school in New Zealand’s winter, but he is putting together a schedule that includes the Commonwealth Games (Glasgow, July 27–August 01) and World Juniors (Eugene, August 04–09) as a focus, along with more learning from international fields and my first races in Europe.
“I’d rather do the right things now to be better later, than focus on running as fast as possible this year, and I know Craig thinks the same.”
