Cordell Tinch went from selling cell phones, installing cable and operating machinery that made toilet paper during a three-year break from track and field to become the world’s fastest hurdler this year.
Tinch, a 22-year-old from Green Bay, Wisconsin, could provide a storybook ending to this week’s USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships, which air live on CNBC, NBCSports.com/live, the NBC Sports app and Peacock.
The top three in Sunday’s 110m hurdles final, the last event of the four-day meet, join world champion Grant Holloway on the team for August’s world championships in Budapest.
“To be able to get a Team USA jersey would be unbelievable, I’ve always wanted one of those,” Tinch, who has never competed at a USATF Championships, said last week. “It would confirm all of my dreams.”
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He can’t point to an origin for his athleticism, but the story of his first dunk will tell you about his ambition. He slammed home a put-back rebound in an eighth-grade AAU game for the Wisconsin Blizzard.
“That was the first time I attempted anything like that,” he said.
Tinch later played for the Wisconsin United with future NBA All-Star Tyrese Haliburton (who it looks like will be wearing a USA jersey this summer). In 2018, he matriculated at the University of Minnesota on a scholarship to hurdle and jump for the track and field team and catch passes for the football team.
He practiced a few weeks before quitting football that summer due to exhaustion from doing two sports. But the track coach joined the University of Kansas just after classes started. So Tinch followed him.
He won the Big 12 title in the 110m hurdles, was the conference’s freshman of the year and the star of a viral tweet. He qualified for the NCAA Championships but didn’t compete there. Tinch said he became ineligible due to academic issues over his transfer from months earlier.
Those problems persisted his sophomore year. Tinch said he and Kansas officials share fault. He competed in indoor meets in January and February of 2020. Then at the onset of the pandemic in March, he tweeted, “Lost part of me a year ago, still searching to put it back in place.”
He left school and went home.
“I took that break more so for my mental health,” he said, noting the toll of the academic issues. “We have definitely grown and moved way past that now.”
Tinch went to Coffeyville Community College in Kansas that fall for one semester to straighten out the academics, but didn’t compete and had no intention of returning to Lawrence. He again went back to Green Bay.
“I would stay home until I decided to finish school, something small at home, or if another opportunity came up,” he said.
Tinch spent the next two years in Wisconsin and decided he was done with the sport.
He installed cable for Spectrum. He was a toilet paper machine operator for Georgia-Pacific. Then he started working at a UScellular store in Suamico.
“I knew that he was in track and field,” said Alan Abrahamson, one of his managers. “He was debating if he wanted to go back to school.”
Tinch credited his decision to return to school, and to track, to two people. His mom, Elizabeth, who wanted him to get a degree. And Treyvon Ferguson, a teammate at Kansas and Coffeyville.
In 2022, Ferguson was recruited from community college to Pittsburg State, a Division II school in Kansas. He told coaches about Tinch, who by then hadn’t cleared a hurdle in two years.
They reached out. Tinch was reluctant but kept taking calls and texts from coaches. Maybe more importantly, he stayed in touch with Ferguson.
“It took a lot of persuading and convincing,” coach Kyle Rutledge said.
By early January, Tinch thought things had fallen through when he hadn’t heard from Ferguson in over a month. Then Ferguson called him unexpectedly, said he was in Pittsburg and asked, “When do you get here?”
Tinch put in his notice at UScellular and bought a plane ticket to Kansas City. He joined Ferguson in Pittsburg about five days after that phone call.
On Feb. 3, Tinch ran his first track race in three years. It was the fastest 60m hurdles of his life.
Tinch lowered his personal-best times and marks a combined 16 times among the hurdles, high jump and long jump through June, according to Tilastopaja.org.
He won NCAA Division II titles in all three events in May at Colorado State Pueblo’s ThunderBowl stadium.
By then, media had already taken notice. Track and Field News reported that Tinch’s story conjured Sports Illustrated‘s fabricated pitcher Sidd Finch. Except Tinch was all real.
The coup de grâce came June 23. He ran 12.96 seconds in a 110m hurdles race in Fayetteville, Arkansas, becoming the 24th man in history to break the 13-second barrier. He supplanted Holloway as the world’s fastest man this year.
After that race, Tinch spoke with his coach on site, his mom and his sisters back home and took at least 15 phone calls from “respected people in the community” of track and field. (He turned pro a week later.)
He also spoke with Ferguson that day. Earlier this year, Ferguson snapped a fibula while long jumping in practice. Tinch, who was nearby, dedicated his outdoor season to his roommate.
“I wanted to make sure I was going out there and doing something special so that, regardless, whenever he was watching a meet, he always had something to look forward to,” Tinch said. “He’s not only my brother, but I’d probably say my No. 2 fan [after my mom].”
Because of Tinch’s unique situation, he began training gradually when he returned to the track this winter after three years away. He started practicing hurdles just once a week because coaches didn’t know how his body would respond. He hasn’t lifted weights in two years and joked on a podcast that he only entered the Pittsburg gym for the free Powerade.
Rutledge can’t explain Tinch’s success, but believes his physical traits and coordination matured in his early 20s even when he wasn’t training.
“If I’m being honest, I would have thought I was going to come back and be washed,” said Tinch, who also qualified to compete in Saturday’s long jump as the fifth-ranked American this year. “I’m still struggling to comprehend, knowing that in early January, in late December, I was selling cell phones still, enjoying what little Green Bay had to offer me. To know that now I am a name within the sport that I’ve always loved, it makes no sense to me. I will never understand it.”
