Elite Youth Athletes Staying Fast With Luck. Welcome to ‘Trackflation’

The sports world, I have found, has coined the name of the most talked about children’s athleticism: trackflation. In June 2025 at the New Balance Nationals, an annual competition that attracts about 6,000 young athletes, more than 100 children broke records. “Now there are probably a hundred kids who run under 4:10 miles,” says Will Rodgers, who ran at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in the early 2010s and is now the owner of RunningLane, a training and events business. “We used to compete in high school, maybe 20 at the max.”

I had to find out why kids today are breaking the cycle. And that means trying to understand the big changes that happened at the beginning of the game.

In early May, I drove to Baltimore to attend the East Coast International Showcase, a two-day outdoor convention sponsored by the shoe company Puma. One of the highlights was the 800-meter race featuring two elite junior teams: Henry Bartle of Carmel, California, and Gunner Hammett of Williamsburg, Virginia.

As the two stars warmed up along the blue track of Morgan State University, I saw Hammett’s father wearing a traditional shirt that read his son’s history: “2 Time World Record Holder 800m, 18 Time All-American, 5-Time National Record Holder.”

These feats were especially remarkable given Hammett’s youth: He was 13 years old, a little younger than Bartle, who was 14. Both boys were still a few weeks away from graduating from eighth grade.

The slender-legged, purple-green Bartle ran the two-lap race to victory in 2:03.52, a personal best time. Three years ago it would have been enough to win the middle school 800 meters at the New Balance Nationals. But he wasn’t close to Hammett, who clocked a 1:57.75 — a performance that puts him on par with the best high school runners in his hometown.

“I think I’ve smoked again,” a wisecracking Bartle tells Hammett as he gets up and crosses the finish line. Bartle, unfortunately, is used to falling. Seven weeks earlier, he and another kid broke the California annual record for the indoor mile, but Bartle finished six seconds off the podium. In one line text In his Instagram post about the race, Bartle explained the meaning of trackflation: “We live in an era where state history has yet to win a medal at Nationals.”

After Bartle regained enough oxygen to function, he explained to me clearly how he was progressing. “Last year, even when I had a problem, I was stubborn and I learned to take action,” he told me. Now he’s prioritizing recovery as part of his regimen, and he believes the sub-800 minutes and sub-4:30 mile are within his reach.

Until seven or eight years ago, few eighth-grade athletes performed with Bartle’s degree of maturity and determination. There were no middle school divisions at the national championships, and the 13- and 14-year-olds rarely put their feet up on their laps every week. But perhaps inevitably, the rise of youth sports expanded to include track and field.

As any millionaire-weary parent can attest, sports like football and baseball have become more competitive over the past generation. Even for third- and fourth-graders, there is constant bickering over popular marching bands, followed by fierce fights during playtime. Some families decided to avoid this madness by leading their children down the aisle, where there were few people who participated in the entrance.