USA’s Kenneth Rooks received his silver medal for the 3,000-meter steeplechase on Thursday, Aug. 8. For the 2024 Paris Olympics track and field events at Stade de France stadium, the medal ceremonies were the day after the event.
Rooks, 24, a former BYU runner and returned missionary, surprised even himself when he won the silver in the steeplechase. He had to come from behind, slowly but surely passing other runners, and then burst into the lead in the last lap of the race.
All of the runners were still bunched in one pack when Rooks began to move to the front. NBC Sports has posted the race on YouTube.
Soufiane El Bakkali of Morocco, the reigning Olympic champion, sprinted and caught up with Rooks, winning gold with a time of 8:06.05, his best of the season.
Rooks finished in second with a time of 8:06.41 — a personal best by nine seconds — with Abraham Kibiwot of Kenya close behind. Kibiwot won bronze with a time of 8:06.47, which was a season’s best for him.
The 3,000-meter steeplechase is 7.5 laps with barriers and a water jump on each lap.
“It was awesome,” Rooks told the Deseret News. “After the race, I was like, what the heck just happened? That was amazing. Incredible. I was just trying to take it all in. I’m super grateful to share this experience with my family, my wife, my in-laws and coach [Ed] Eyestone.”
The 2024 Paris Olympics was Rooks’ second international competition. The first was last year at the 2023 world championships in Budapest, where he placed 10th.
In 2023, he won the NCAA championships and won the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championship after falling early in the race. He won the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials.
Eyestone, Rooks’ coach, told the Deseret News they had a plan going into the race, to keep a steady pace for the first part of the race. This put Rooks near the back of the 16 runners, including in last place at one point. As others began to feel the effects of an early, faster pace, Rooks slowly began to move forward.
“The race was what you saw,” said Eyestone. “It was amazing and inspiring.”
Rooks told Citius magazine, which focuses on running and track and field news: “It’s surreal, it was an amazing feeling to take the lead that last lap and to just let loose and go for it and realize that I might actually win the thing for a second. … It’s just a dream.”
The returned missionary who served in Uganda and Orem, Utah, and is from Washington state is one of several athletes with connections to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Athletics (track and field)
Also on the Stad de France purple track, Australia’s Peter Bol ran in the 800-meters repechage heats on Thursday, Aug. 8, for a chance to run in the semifinals. There were four heats, and the winner of each heat and the next two fastest runners advanced.
In the preliminary heats on Wednesday, Aug. 8, the top three runners from each of the four heats advanced to the semifinals. All of the other runners who finished the race could compete in the repechage heats for the remaining spots in the semifinals.
Bol was in the first heat of nine men and finished fourth with a time of 1 minute, 46.12 seconds, about six-tenths of a second behind the leader, Kethobogile Haingura of Botswana, whose time was 1:45.52. Bol was near the front for the first lap, at one point was in second behind Haingura. Other runners surged forward at the end, and he ended up in a group of five sprinting to finish line. Of the 32 runners across all five heats, he was 18th.
This is Bol’s third Olympics — he ran in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. In Tokyo, he was fourth in the finals. His family is originally from South Sudan and emigrated to Australia when he was a child.
Upcoming competitions
Team USA’s Conner Mantz, 27, and Clayton Young, 30, will be running the marathon on Saturday, Aug. 20, scheduled for 8 a.m. Paris time, midnight Mountain time.
