Even by his own estimation, Kenneth Rooks, the Olympic silver medalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, has had “a roller coaster season,” and that sentence alone is part of the new challenge he faces: Everywhere he goes, he’s identified as the Olympic silver medalist.
“Once I won the silver medal, everyone expected me to do well in every single race,” he says. “It has affected my ability to perform … I don’t want to avoid being a silver medalist; I want to embrace it, and I do; it’s just the pressure that comes with it ... I’ve dealt with it well at times and sometimes not.”
He had two poor indoor races (19th and 14th places). He ran well in an outdoor steeplechase race in Los Angeles, running away with the win and recording his second-fastest time ever (8:14.25). He had a disappointing 5,000-meter race in Portland (12th place) and fell apart in a Diamond League race in Monaco (15th). Then he won his third-consecutive U.S. championships. That was followed by a third-place finish in the Bahamas, in which he faded badly on the final lap.
‘Back to the basics’
“Life’s different now,” he says. “Every time I line up for a race, I’m introduced as the silver medalist. That’s the title I carry. ... Every season is its own journey and I want to get back to the basics that made me successful.”
He mentions this merely as a fact of life and not a complaint — a point he makes a couple of times.
“Every time I line up for a race, I’m introduced as the silver medalist. That’s the title I carry. ... Every season is its own journey.”
— Kenneth Rooks
The silver medal also brings many speaking requests on top of the requests he was already receiving for his famous, come-from-behind win in the 2023 U.S. championships after he fell hard to the track midrace.
“I keep having good races people want to hear about,” he says. “The speaking engagements have been a blessing, but sometimes they’re hard to manage. Sometimes I’ve had to say no.”
Any silver medal performance is bound to attract attention, but Rooks’ race was so unexpected, even shocking, that it drew even more attention. He was a relative unknown heading into the Olympics. He had come out of nowhere in 2023 to win the NCAA championships and then the U.S. championships. A year later, he was not considered a contender in the Paris Olympics.
He faced a field of accomplished, veteran performers from Africa and Europe, who have dominated the event for decades. Almost all of them had run much faster than Rooks.
Rooks dropped into the back of the pack to start the race, as he likes to do. He began to reel in the front runners over the final laps, and with 500 meters to go, he moved into the top four.
“Look at Kenneth Rooks!” the NBC crew crowed to a worldwide TV audience. With less than a lap to go, Rooks took the lead. It was a bold, gutsy move.
“Look at him now, going to the front!” cried NBC’s Kara Goucher.
Ethiopia’s Samuel Firewu, who was in the lead, actually did a double take at Rooks as the latter sprinted by him into the lead with 350 meters to go. As Goucher noted, “He just looked over at (Rooks) as if to say, ‘Who are you?!’ Kenneth Rooks of the United States is leading the men’s steeplechase!”
He opened a 4-meter lead down the backstretch and he still held the lead as he turned into the homestretch.
Morocco’s Soufiane El Bakkali, visibly laboring to catch the American, edged ahead of Rooks with about 80 meters left to claim his second Olympic gold medal and fifth global gold with a time of 8:06.05. Rooks clocked 8:06.41, putting him .07 seconds ahead of Kenya’s Abraham Kibiwot.
Rooks had run a whopping nine seconds faster than his previous best and became the second fastest American ever. It was a rare feat. In the previous 100 years, Americans had won only six medals in the steeplechase, only two in the previous nine Olympics. Africans had won 23 of the previous 30 medals going back to 1988.
As Rooks crossed the finish in a furious sprint, NBC (never known for neutrality) was ecstatic. “Kenneth Rooks! Unbelievable! (El Bakkali) was surprised at how hard (Rooks) came on. He was not expecting Kenneth Rooks to take it to the entire field and make a race out of it.”
Low point
It’s been a little over a year since that race, and it has been a tough act to follow. The low point came during a Diamond League race in Monaco, pitting him against El Bakkali again. El Bakkali won with a time of 8:03.18. Rooks was 25 seconds behind, in 15th place.
“I was having a hard time. (Training partners) Dan (Michalski) and James (Corrigan) crushed me.”
— Kenneth Rooks on his 15th-place finish in Monoco
“I was hopeful for a fast time,” says Rooks. “I had my best steeple workouts ever heading into Monaco. That gave me confidence that I can run in the low eight-minute range. But I didn’t have it mentally. I had to talk to a sports psychologist to figure it out. Why did I not have the fight that day? It was hard mentally to fight when the race got tough. I knew my fitness was there. I processed that.”
His coach, Ed Eyestone, was puzzled by Rooks’ poor performance and sent him to get a blood test the following Monday to ensure everything was in order. The coach felt better when Rooks had a good workout Tuesday, but on Thursday, he bonked and couldn’t finish the session.
“I was having a hard time,” says Rooks. “(Training partners) Dan (Michalski) and James (Corrigan) crushed me.”
Eyestone was really concerned now. “I thought, ‘Oh, crap,’” says the coach. “He had had a stinker race on Saturday and then followed it up with a bad workout. He had to do well at USAs to go to the world championships.”
Eyestone asked Rooks about the blood test and learned that he had had seven vials of blood drawn instead of the usual one or two. “I thought that probably explained the workout,” says Eyestone.
“I ordered the wrong blood tests,” says Rooks. “We just wanted the Vitamin D and iron levels checked, but they checked everything. They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, but they took enough blood that we were thinking it affected my effort.”
Bouncing back
It turned out to be a temporary setback. Two weeks later, Rooks rebounded, winning his third-consecutive U.S. championships.
“USAs was an awesome race,” says Rooks. “I had to refocus after Monaco. I was super nervous. It was the most nervous I’ve been before USAs. The race went out slowly. I took the lead with three laps to go. No one else was going to make a move; something needed to happen. I gradually picked up the pace.”
He continued to pick up the pace each lap and then squeezed it on the last lap. His last three lap splits were 64, 62, 59.
“Yeah, my fitness is there,” says Rooks, clearly relieved.
As challenging as his Olympic encore act has been, Rooks says that he and his wife Taylor “are at a cool place in our lives.” Rooks graduated with a degree in civil engineering in April and Taylor began grad school. They bought a house, a dog and eight chickens (“Some of our chickens have lost their tail feathers,” he notes dryly).
Looking ahead to the world championships this month, Eyestone says simply, “Kenny has the ability to do some really special things.”
