Ja’Kobe Tharp ran the 110-meter hurdles in 12.75 seconds on Wednesday at the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon, a preliminary race that would become the world record if it is ratified. The Auburn hurdler was already clear of the field before the clock stopped, and the time cut the previous record of 12.80 by a twentieth of a second.

That is why the race is being searched so heavily now: 12.75 seconds is not just fast, it is record-breaking territory for an event where the benchmark had stood since 2012, when Aries Merritt of the United States ran 12.80 in Brussels. Tharp’s performance also carried Auburn into the center of one of the rare moments when the NCAA championships produce a result with global implications.

Tharp did not sound like someone trying to build a case for history. In a team release, he said he was speechless and did not mean to run that fast, adding that he knew he would be in really good shape because the team had started deloading to peak for this meet. He said it was about executing, that he was focused only on himself, and that he knew he had something faster than 13.0 in his legs.

The race itself backed up the words. Tharp beat Texas runner Kendrick Smallwood by more than a quarter of a second, with Baylor’s Demario Prince taking third. said during its broadcast that it was the first world record set at the NCAA championships, a claim that places the run in a small slice of the sport’s history.

But the record is not official yet. The 12.75 will stand in the books only if ratified, and that leaves the result in the narrow space between what happened on the track and what the sport is ready to recognize. If the time holds, Tharp will have done something almost never seen at this level: turned an NCAA preliminary race into a new line in the world record book.

Track records are usually the preserve of the Olympics, the World Championships and the Diamond League, which is why this one lands with so much force. The NCAA championships have only one other world record still standing, Kerron Clement’s 44.57 in the men’s 400-meter short track from 2005. Tharp may have just added a second, but for now the sport’s next step is procedural: the watch, the review and the ratification that will decide whether 12.75 becomes official.