EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — For nearly two years, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone virtually disappeared from the 400-meter hurdles course.
It turns out she wasn’t hiding or looking for something else to do. She was simply looking to get better at what she does best.
The 24-year-old Olympic champion lowered the world record for the fifth time Sunday, closing the U.S. Olympic trials with 10 jumps over the barriers and then an all-out sprint to the finish line in 50.65 seconds. She beat her previous record by 0.03 seconds.
This took place on the last day of testing at Hayward Field. His first record returned in 2021 — also on the last day of trials and also at Hayward Field.
In fact, it’s the fourth of five world records he’s set on the University of Oregon track, which has hosted the lion’s share of American track and field’s greatest moments over the past quarter-century.
But to say that she expected it would not be the case.
“I’m really shocked,” said McLaughlin-Levrone, who covered her mouth in shock when she walked through the window and saw the time. “I know the first time it came up it said 50.67. I said to myself: “This is impossible. » »
Then the clock was set down two notches.
“I didn’t expect this moment,” she said.
Including the two preliminary rounds of trials this week, this was just McLaughlin-Levrone’s fourth 400-meter hurdles race of the season. Unlike other times she’s taken to the track, there wasn’t much buzz surrounding her mark of 50.68 — set at the 2022 world championships, also here in Hayward — that came this time around.
A closer look shows that this was all just part of the plan.
She spent her time working on the shorter hurdles, as well as the 200- and 400-meter sprints, two events she had hinted at might be her main events in the future. In reality, all of these races allowed her to improve in her main work. All are good for speed. The short hurdles helped her master the difficult art of jumping on either foot.
“She ran in Atlanta and she was having trouble attacking the hurdles and getting into running order” because of all her new speed, great hurdler Edwin Moses said of the first 400 hurdle race from McLaughlin-Levrone in 2024. “I told him I had similar issues and his brain just had to catch up with his body. »
That’s what happened, and in an event that was once decided in stages or blowouts, 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.
The latest record doesn’t so much reset the Olympics storyline — McLaughlin-Levrone would have been the heavy favorite anyway — but it does force the track to once again rethink what’s possible.
Now, instead of a highly anticipated showdown with Dutchwoman Femke Bol, the conversation will turn to when the 50-second mark might fall in this race. Perhaps as early as August 8, the date of the Olympic final in Paris.
“It could happen,” Moses said. “She might need a few more runs, but that’s it.”
It was a remarkable journey that happened remarkably quickly.
From 2003 to 2019, the world record for this event remained stuck at 52.34 seconds. American Dalilah Muhammad broke it twice in 2019 — the second time at the world championships in a race that demoralized McLaughlin-Levrone and prompted him to become coach Bobby Kersee.
Kersee changed everything for her. One of the biggest adjustments was bringing it back to 14 strides between the first hurdles. It was a game changer that put her in a class of her own but also forced her to rework her takeoffs, and that’s where the work on the short hurdles helped.
“I said it before, she just broke a world record and we’re not even shocked at this point,” said Muhammad, the 2016 Olympic champion who finished sixth on Sunday. “She has an incredible talent, a generational talent, that’s for sure. I didn’t know I was the only one to beat her, so good luck to me. »
In addition to coming out of the events with the world record in hurdles, this year she is also the world leader in the 400 flat.
McLaughlin-Levrone ran 48.75 seconds in New York in early June — a simple exercise in speed, but also a discouraging sign for any country hoping to challenge the United States in the 4×400 relay in Paris.
McLaughlin-Levrone started running all those 400s and 200s shortly after the 2022 world championships wrapped up in Eugene, the moment she lowered the world record to 50.68.
At the time, she hinted that all those races could be in her future. It was only a few weeks ago that she announced she was returning to her first love.
Then, on a quiet night in Oregon, she brought the curtain down on the 2024 Olympic Trials and gave the track a little boost in the process: all those other races weren’t just for fun .
“The 400m hurdles is a mixture of all of those,” she said. “It’s the combination of short hurdles and 4s, and 2s. You need this endurance, this speed and this technicality. So these are the basic elements that allowed us to get through it. »
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paris-olympics-2024
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