U.S. teen Lutkenhaus breaks world junior indoor 800m record

American athletics prodigy Cooper Lutkenhaus broke the world junior indoor 800-meters record on Saturday (February 15, 2026) with a victory in 1min 44.03secs at the Sound Running meet in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The 17-year-old Texan won the invitational event by 0.70 of a second over Penn State’s Handal Roban to become the sixth-fastest athlete indoors in 800m history.

Lutkenhaus erased the under-20 world record of 1:44.35 set in January 2000 by Russian Yuriy Borzakovskiy, who won 800m Olympic gold in 2004 at Athens.

Lutkenhaus was a stunning runner-up at last year’s American championships at Eugene, Oregon, to earn a berth in the 2025 World Championships at Tokyo.

Also in the Winston-Salem meet, Paris Olympic 1,500m champion Cole Hocker won the mile in 3:45.94 with fellow American Cooper Teare second in 3:50.49.

Hocker clocked the second-fastest world indoor mile time in history behind the world record of 3:45.14 set by Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen last February in France.