Huge breakthrough race Saturday for St. Augustine’s Sincere Rhea, a Miami junior, who not only ran a big PR with legal wind in the 110-meter hurdles on his home track, he edged three-time Big East champion Terrel Williams of UConn in a matchup of two of the nation’s top hurdlers.
Rhea won the hurdles at the Hurricane Alumni Invitational at Cobb stadium in Coral Gables in 13.74 racing into a 1.2-meters-per-second wind. Williams ran 13.76 for second place.
Rhea’s wind-legal PR was 13.89, which he ran in the trials of the Big Ten Championships in Champaign, Ill., as a Penn State sophomore in May of 2021, and matched in a meet in Baton Rouge, La., last April. He ran a heavily wind-aided 13.72 two weeks ago in Coral Gables – that was with a 4.1 mps tailwind. Anything over 2.0 mps disqualifies a performance in the 100, 200, high hurdles or horizontal junms from record and list consideration.
That 13.74 equals the No. 4 performance in Miami history and is fastest since Artie Burns ran 13.70 at the 2016 NCAA East Preliminary Round meet in Jacksonville. Burns was the Steelers’ 1st-round draft pick in 2016 and has spent the last seven years playing cornerback with the Steelers, Bears and Seahawks.
Of the three athletes ahead of Rhea on the all-time Miami list, two are from New Jersey. Trenton’s Devon Hill set the school record of 13.35 at the 2012 ACC Championships in Charlottesville, and Cory Nelms of Neptune, who ran and played briefly for the Raiders in 2012, ran all-time Miami No. 2 13.65 at the 2010 NCAA East Prelims in Greensboro, N.C.
Rhea’s 13.74 ranks No. 26 in the world this year, according to the World Athletics performance list, and No. 13 in the U.S.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 