ROOKS RUNS INSPIRED STEEPLE, BEATS THE LONG ODDS, BUT ASHENFELTER STILL ALONE

ROOKS RUNS INSPIRED STEEPLE,
BEATS THE LONG ODDS,
BUT ASHENFELTER STILL ALONE

By ELLIOTT DENMAN

Horace Ashenfelter was surely looking down in approval.

The only American runner ever to win the Olympic 3000-meter steeplechase

Gold Medal said his goodbyes at age 94 on January 6, 2018, in West Orange,

New Jersey.

But his legacy continues…on and on and on.

Knowing the man – and all the incredible things he represented – I can tell you for sure that he was leading the cheering section “up there as Kenneth Rooks made his amazing charge down the backstretch of the eighth lap, around the turn and its water jump, and then down the Stade De France homestretch, thus coming within a whisker or two of joining the organization

that can’t possibly be more exclusive.

That’s the USA 3000 Steeple Champions Club, and “Ash” is still its charter – and 72 years later – only member,

But barely.

Rooks’ gutsy, long-shot, forget-the-formcharts closing run – which eventually got him the silver medal back only of Morocco’s repeat champion Soufiane El Bakkali, will resound everywhere from College Place, Washington, his hometown, to Provo, Utah, where he mastered the distance running game at Brigham Young University….to Glen Ridge, NJ, where “Ash” long resided after his own college days at Penn State.

That Wednesday night steeple race – eventually won by El Bakkali in 8:06.05 over Rooks’s 8:06.41 and Abraham Kibiwot’s 8:06.47 for Kenya – constituted one of the most dramatic moments of these Games of the XXXIII Olympiad and would have been one of the upsets of the ages.

Of course/of course, Cole Hocker’s run for the gold in the 1500 meters a day earlier was brilliant-just-brilliant. But Hocker, long shot as he was, had at least been in the medal conversation (with Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Jeff Kerr ).

Likely, though no one in the wide-wide world beyond College Place and Provo had listed Rooks better than a thousand-to-one shot.

Which brings me back to a stroll down memory lane.

Ashenfelter, too, faced long odds, when he stepped to the line at

Helsinki Olympic Stadium, July 25, 1952. But not as long as those on Rooks, Aug. 7, 2024.

Ashenfelter came to Helsinki fit and ready. An Army Air Force pilot vet, by then an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he’d won major USA races from the mile up to the 10K, and was a top star on the indoor track circuit that regularly…