For the better part of two years, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone all but disappeared from the 400m hurdles course. Turns out, she was not hiding or looking for something else to do. Just getting better at what she does best.
The 24-year-old Olympic champion on Sunday lowered the world record for the fifth time, closing out the US Olympic Team Trials at Hayward Field with 10 leaps over the barriers, then an all-out sprint toward the finish line in 50.65 seconds. She broke her last record by 0.03 seconds.
Her first record was in 2021 — also on the last day of trials.
Photo: AP
It was the fourth of her five world records she has set on the track at the University of Oregon, which has hosted the lion’s share of American track’s greatest moments over the past quarter century.
To say she expected this, though, would not be the case.
“Just shock. Honestly shock,” said McLaughlin-Levrone, who covered her mouth in amazement when she crossed and saw the time. “I know when it first came up it said: ‘50.67.’ I was like: ‘There’s just no way.’”
Then, the clock adjusted down two ticks.
“I wasn’t expecting that time,” she said.
Counting the two preliminary rounds at trials this week, this was only McLaughlin-Levrone’s fourth 400m hurdles race of the season. Unlike other times when she has taken the track, there was not a huge amount of buzz about her mark of 50.68 seconds — set at world championships in 2022, also here at Hayward — going down this time.
A closer look showed that this was all simply part of the plan.
She spent her time working on the shorter hurdles, along with 200m and 400m sprints, both of which she had hinted might be in her future as her main event. Really, what all those races were doing were making her better at her main job. All of them are good for speed. The short hurdles helped her master the difficult art of jumping off either foot.
“She ran in Atlanta, and she was having problems attacking the hurdles and getting her steps together” because of all her newfound speed, hurdling great Edwin Moses said of McLaughlin-Levrone’s first 400m hurdles race this year.
“I told her I’d had similar problems and that her brain just had to catch up with her physicality,” Moses said.
It did, and in an event that used to be decided by steps or slivers, McLaughlin-Levrone’s victory came by 1.99 seconds over Anna Cockrell and 2.12 over Jasmine Jones.
“She’s really fast and she’s really strong, it’s hard to put it any other way,” Cockrell said.
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