The 110-metre hurdles world record, among the most durable in athletics, fell on Wednesday in the unlikeliest of settings: a qualifying heat at the American college championships. Ja’Kobe Tharp, a 20-year-old student at Auburn University, scorched to a time of 12.75 seconds at the University of Oregon’s historic Hayward Field, easing through with a legal following wind of +1.0 m/s. The performance erased a mark that had stood since 2012 and shocked even its author, who had never before dipped under 13 seconds in competition.

The previous world record of 12.80 was set in the rarefied atmosphere of a Diamond League meet in Brussels by the American Aries Merritt, a year after his Olympic triumph. Tharp’s own credentials entering the NCAA championships were modest by comparison: his personal best stood at 13.01, and the prospect of a world record in an early round was, in his words, “not on my bingo chart”. The 0.26-second improvement is one of the most dramatic breakthroughs in recent sprinting history, prompting disbelief from the athlete and roars from a crowd accustomed to collegiate drama but not, ordinarily, to world-record pace.

From a European perspective, the circumstances carry a note of bemusement. The record arrived not under the floodlights of a global championship but during a university meet, reinforcing the sheer depth of American collegiate sport. German analysts likened the feat to breaking a “sound barrier”, while French observers stressed the “surprise générale” of the achievement. Viewed from Washington, it bolsters the argument that the NCAA system remains a formidable talent incubator; the last time a world record was set at these championships was fifty years ago, an interval that underscores the rarity.

Tharp now advances to Friday’s final, where he insisted he has “more in the legs” and that his qualifying run was “not a picture-book race”. Should conditions prove favourable, a further lowering of the mark is conceivable. More broadly, the performance repositions the 110m hurdles as an event in flux, with a new generation of American talent – including Olympic champion Grant Holloway, whose collegiate record of 12.98 Tharp has now eclipsed – pushing each other toward ever-faster times. In a sport often defined by marginal gains, this was a leap of a different order, and it may signal a wider shift in the sprint hurdles landscape.