SShe looked almost alone in the final stretch, skimming the last two hurdles effortlessly and almost 10 meters from her nearest rivals by the tape, a single woman. A word that comes to mind when watching Sydney McLaughlin-Levron in the 400m hurdles. Didn’t botherBeyond the roar of the 68,000 spectators. She didn’t seem to be running that fast.
America’s 100th medal at the Paris Olympics may have been the highest and lowest medal of all at the same time. The pride of New Brunswick, more clearly touched by the divine than any New Jersey native since Whitney Houston, delivered a breathtaking Olympic performance Thursday night, billed as a showdown with Femke Pol of the Netherlands. Belmont. McLaughlin-Levrone broke away from the Dutch star on the final bend and saw her fly 1.5 seconds ahead of American teammate Anna Cockrell, reaffirming what everyone already knew: her only competition.
Let’s start with the basics. McLaughlin-Levrone, who turned 25 on Wednesday, first broke the 400m hurdles world record at the 2021 US Olympic trials, broke it at the Tokyo Games and has lowered it four times, including by nearly thirty-tenths of a second on Thursday. the night In doing so, he surpassed Michael Johnson’s 400m records in 1996 and 2000. He became the first American to retain an Olympic individual track title after gold medals. Second 400 m. He clocked 50.37 seconds to finish third in the race. Flat semi-final on Wednesday. Owner of seven of the 13 fastest times in the 400m hurdles, it has been more than five years since he lost in that event. No one has run better since Allyson Felix.
The sport was so desperate to find a successor to Usain Bolt that it hired the makers of the F1 documentary Drive to Survive. They were looking in the wrong place all the time. McLaughlin-Levron has been keenly watched throughout the Paris Olympics, either because the 400m hurdles fell so late in the program or because so many of her teammates were in the spotlight and without any crumbs on an almost nightly basis. But when it comes to star wattage, McLaughlin-Levron dispelled all doubt Thursday night with a scintillating defiance that inspired Bolt and established him as the face of the game.
In an Olympics heralded as an American clapback in Tokyo, especially on the men’s side, Thursday night’s stacked bill, the hot ticket of the 11-day, 21-session meet, was bursting with star-studded promise. Bad seats fetch over €800 on the official resale site. In a dizzying 75-minute span, three of the four Americans headed for gold. Aside from Sydney’s stunning performance, Tara Davies-Woodhall won the long jump, took a victory lap as James Brown’s Living in America played, and three-time world champion Grant Holloway swept the field in the long-awaited 110m hurdles for the Olympics. Gold. One who didn’t was Noah Lyles, who managed bronze despite a Covid diagnosis that immediately dwarfed everything else on the track.
Yet somehow that night belonged only to McLaughlin-Levrone, who has come a long way since her Olympic debut at the Rio Games as the youngest American athlete in more than four decades. He admitted that his 400m hurdles semi-final at the Estadio Olimpico Nilton Santos that year was a deliberate failure due to crippling anxiety and fear of failure. These days? If she wasn’t already the world’s most dominant athlete, she’d definitely be on the shortlist. And what’s scarier is that there’s no telling where this whole thing is going with a home Olympics in four years.
One of the most enigmatic stars in any sport, McLaughlin-Levron has consistently teased the world with his vast potential; He raced in five different events this year – 100m and 400m hurdles, 200m and 400m flat and 4x100m relay – and recorded world-class times. Just before the U.S. Olympic Trials, she confirmed she was narrowing her focus to defending gold in the 400-meter hurdles, an event she calls her “first love.”
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For now, McLaughlin-Levrone will enjoy Thursday’s victory and a chance for a fourth Olympic gold in the 4x400m relay.
“The effort was there, the heart was there,” he said. “That’s all I can ask.”
