Two cheeseburgers, a large fries and ten chicken nuggets: it's an unlikely pre-race routine, but for Auburn's Ja'Kobe Tharp it's stayed exactly the same since his first state title.

Three hours before Ja'Kobe Tharp became the 110m hurdles world record-holder, he ate at McDonald's.

On June 10, ahead of his heat at the NCAA Championships at Hayward Field, the Auburn senior worked through two cheeseburgers, a large fries and ten Chicken McNuggets — 1246 calories, by one count, not including the sauce. That evening he ran 12.75 seconds for the 110m hurdles, breaking Aries Merritt's 13-year-old world record and becoming only the second man since 1976 to set a world record at the NCAA Championships.

It is not a one-off. Tharp has eaten the same meal before every race, he says, since first doing so as a high-school junior on his way to winning the Tennessee state hurdles title. Auburn head coach Ken Harndon has since bought it for him "on three different continents... well, actually, four," while Tharp himself is unmoved by suggestions he might want to change things up. "Coach Ken told me I'm going to change my diet soon," he says. "But if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

He kept the habit going at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo and again in Budapest last month, where the same pre-race meal preceded a win at the István Gyulai Memorial.

He is not the first elite athlete to lean on fast food before big moments. Usain Bolt famously ate little but McDonald's Chicken McNuggets at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, reportedly getting through more than a thousand of them in ten days after struggling to find food he liked in the athletes' village.

According to Auburn exercise scientist Brooks Mobley, there may be more to the routine than superstition, even if he wouldn't necessarily recommend it generally. Some athletes, he says, are simply metabolic outliers — able to eat heartily and still perform, or even gain muscle rather than fat as a result. He isn't sure a distance runner could get away with the same routine, since a meal that heavy in fat can pull blood and energy toward digestion rather than working muscles. But over a race lasting less than 13 seconds, drawing mostly on the body's most immediate energy systems, the calculation changes — and the meal's high sodium content may even help support fluid balance in hot conditions.

What matters most, Mobley suggests, is less what Tharp eats than the certainty of it. Pre-race rituals, down to the music an athlete listens to or the order they put their kit on, are common across elite sport, and a fixed routine can cut down on decision fatigue and nerves before a big race. Tharp, for what it's worth, washes his meal down with something rather less on-brand than his sponsor might like: plain water. "Got to stay hydrated," he says.

Thanks to Auburn University's AUWire for info. You can read the full story at wire.auburn.edu