Kenneth Rooks Talks Paris Silver-Medal Race

GOING FOR THE gold is a careworn though irresistible meme wafting so ever-present in the atmosphere around an Olympic Games that sometimes it’s easy to underplay startling performances that earn medals of other colors or places a few notches lower in the results. This wasn’t the case for any U.S. fan who watched Kenneth Rooks’ bold last-lap surge in the men’s steeple.

Rooks, a 24-year-old BYU alum and native of Walla Walla, Washington, passed 7 men in the straight before the bell, broke from the field, built a brief lead of 5m on the last backstretch and only gave 1st up to defending champion Soufiane El Bakkali with 100 to go. He held on for silver in 8:06.41, an 8.67 improvement of his best that elevated him to No. 2 all-time U.S. performer.

With medal around his neck, and kitted out in the Team USA gear he wore that morning as he ran around to watch training mates Conner Mantz and Clayton Young race to 8th and 9th in the marathon, Rooks joined T&FN’s Olympic Tour luncheon at Aéro-Club de France. Accompanied by wife Taylor, his parents and in-laws, Rooks from the flying club stage entertained luncheon guests with his account of the race that raised him in his first Olympic final to silver medalist status.

T&FN Editor Sieg Lindstrom conducted the interview, portions of which appear below, lightly edited for context and clarity.

SL: I’d like to introduce Kenneth Rooks [avalanche of applause], who earned perhaps the most unexpected silver medal of the Games. But perhaps that’s not the way you look at it?

Rooks: Well, yeah, I would describe it as unexpected. I mean, my coach, Ed Eyestone, definitely believed in me and I had a little bit of belief for myself — because of how well I can close the race and how well I closed at USA’s that if I was in position, I would have a chance at medaling maybe. So I was like, “OK, that might be a possibility.”

But going into the race, I just wanted to execute the race to the best of my ability and give everything I had and run without any regrets.

And I had nothing to lose. So that’s kind of the mindset I was going into the race with and just seeing where that was gonna take me.

SL: That’s great. I’d add that Kenneth is an athlete who thinks on his feet. Memorably at the USATF nationals last year, he went down after about 2½ laps….