USA’s Cordell Tinch goes from toilet paper factory to 110m hurdles world champion | World Athletics Championships

Cordell Tinch took the long road to becoming a world-class athlete but capped a superb second season as a professional by winning the 110m hurdles at the world championships on another sweltering Tokyo night on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old American was all control and pace as he blazed over the 10 hurdles and held off the fast finishers in the run-in to claim the title in 12.99 seconds. Orlando Bennett ran a personal best 13.08 to win silver, while his fellow Jamaican Tyler Mason took the bronze in 13.12, which matched his previous best time.

Tinch could not have imagined it would be him in late 2022 when he was a cellphone salesman in his home town Green Bay, having given up first a college football scholarship and then a shot at Division I athletics due to a combination of burnout and academic issues. During his three-year break from the track he also installed cable and worked in a toilet paper factory.

“I don’t think that I make it to where I am now if I don’t ever take that break to find myself,” Tinch said before the world championships. “Finding myself was the biggest part of all of that. Just because at the time, I don’t think I was a very happy person.”

After encourgagement from his mother and his close friend, he returned to the track at Pitt State in 2023 and impressed in the hurdles sufficiently to turn professional last year, only for mid-season surgery to deny him the momentum to claim a spot on the US team for the Paris Olympics. He missed out on the Games by one place at the US Olympic trials, despite recording a time that would have won him silver in Paris.

This season, however, he has dominated his event and Tinch’s sizzling 12.87 at the Shanghai/Keqiao Diamond League in May made him the joint-fourth fastest 110m hurdler of all time.

Olympic gold medallist Grant Holloway’s six-year reign as world champion ended earlier on Tuesday when the American finished sixth in his semi-final, guaranteeing a fresh champion in the event.