Mclaughlin-Levron’s favourite past time: Breaking her own records | Sport-others News

Noah Lyles lay slumped on the track, gobsmacked at his hands that turn into scythes and churn whirls of air around him into rocket fuel, not taking him past the Parisian finish line. Neeraj Chopra went deep within himself. He grunted, he roared and he tried to fuse together every ounce of him into a fling that would fly past the Olympic record – but the evening belonged to the man from Pakan who blew away everyone in one of the greatest javelin Olympic finals of all time.
Lyles came crashing down. Chopra’s taut face had to accept silver. On the best day of athletics at the Paris Olympics, where a brash American was set to shut down the ‘haters’ taking the 200m crown and possibly better his American record, and an Indian javelin star was looking to launch himself into the stratosphere of sporting achievements in his country, only Sydney Mclaughlin-Levrone stuck the landing many expected all three to make.
She is the greatest 400m hurdler ever. The YouTube montages of her breaking her own world records continue its steady extensions. It is not often you could add minutes to the clips because the American track and field darling rarely runs and even less so outside Europe. Mclaughlin-Levrone had never competed at a Diamond League meet until last year in Paris, and that too was at the 400m, to prepare for the US Championships. In the past three years, the 25-year-old ran a grand total of five races in the 400m hurdles – the Olympics, the US Championships and the two World Championships – and broke her own World Record in each and every one of them.
Paris 2024 Olympics – Athletics – Women’s 400m Hurdles Final – Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France – August 08, 2024. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of United States in action. REUTERS/Carlos Perez Gallardo
A month back, any threats to her were laughable. Then came Dutch sprinter Femke Bol. She already has a cult following for her kicks in the final third of her races. The Paris Olympics witnessed the famous burst of torque at the end that eclipsed all runners ahead when she put on the afterburners in the 4x400m mixed relay to nab gold. But what made the 400m hurdles interesting this time was the European champion altering her technique before the Games.
Bol put every 400m hurdler on notice when she broke her own European record, putting up a scorching 50.95 seconds (her earlier best was 51.45) barely a month before her second Olympics. She realised that in to take down the gifted American sprinter, she would have to reduce her steps in between the first five hurdles to fourteen, instead of her usual of fifteen. At the 2022 World Championships in Oregon, where McLaughlin-Levrone torched Delilah Muhammad and Bol, the American had incredibly cleared seven hurdles in fourteen steps and then the last three hurdles fifteen to clock her famous 50.68 World Record.
Gone in 50 (.37) seconds
So when 2024 Paris rolled in, Bol was suddenly way closer to Mclaughlin-Levrone’s rear-view mirror than many expected anyone to be. “The goal for Femke will be to stay as close as possible into the straight,” her coach Laurent Meuwly had earlier said. When the hurdlers came onto the tracks, the highest cheers came from the Dutch, who had made the short hop to Paris in numbers. The stage was perfectly set for an upset, on an evening ripe for it.
Just 50.37 seconds after the start of their vaunted race, McLaughlin-Levrone came first and made it look pedestrian. Bol finished third and was crying on the shoulders of her parents in the stands. What happened in those 50-odd seconds?
Paris 2024 Olympics – Athletics – Women’s 400m Hurdles Final – Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France – August 08, 2024. Silver medall Anna Cockrell of United States with bronze medall Femke Bol of Netherlands after the race. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Bol, to give her the absolute credit, kept up till the straight, as her coach had asked of her. She wasn’t quite there but there was enough potential for that famous last straight kick to come in and upend the apple cart. But in the straight leading up to the finish line, McLaughlin-Levrone flew and the Dutch star tightened up. Gone was the fourteen-step and up in flames went those hopes of taking down the tallest mountain in the women’s 400m hurdles. Bol ran a 52.15 second race – slower than the 52.03 she had run at the Tokyo Olympics. Chasing greatness, the Dutch combusted spectacularly.
What about McLaughlin-Levrone’s takedown of her own World Record again? The constant shaving of her own 50 second just-barely-there-plus mark until it’s no longer in the 50s, is coming. In the post-run presser, she made it clear that it was an ambition. World Athletics is already wondering whether the American’s dominance has gone too far.

WA President Sebastian Coe suggested it might be worthwhile to raise the heights of hurdles: “There’s probably a case now for looking at the height of the hurdles because these guys don’t really look like they are breaking their form very much. That’s a mixture of good hurdling and probably the height.” The American’s raised the bar like no other, so of course the sport is forced to put the hurdles higher.