EUGENE, Ore. — Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone once again broke her own world record by winning the 400-meter hurdles in 50.65 seconds at the U.S. Olympic Trials on Sunday.
The 24-year-old defending Olympic champion, in just his fourth long-distance hurdle race of the season, cleared 10 obstacles with ease before sprinting to the finish line to set a new record for the fifth time.
Four of those records were now set at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
She held her hand over her mouth and stared in amazement as her time went up, 0.03 seconds faster than the time she ran at Hayward in the 2022 world championships.
“My husband asked me yesterday, ‘What do you think you can do?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know,'” McLaughlin-Levrone said in an interview over the stadium’s PA system. “And then today, I crossed the finish line and I was like, ‘I got it.’ I’m happy to be here.”
In a competition that was once decided by steps and slivers, McLaughlin-Levrone won by 1.99 seconds over Anna Cockrell and 2.12 seconds over Jasmine Jones.
This doesn’t really change the Olympic storyline — McLaughlin-Levrone would have been the favorite to win anyway — but it does make the athletics world rethink its possibilities.
From 2003 to 2019, the world record for the event stagnated at 52.34 seconds. In 2019, American Dalilah Muhammad broke the record twice, the second time in a race at world championships that demoralized head coach McLaughlin-Levrone and prompted her move to coach Bobby Carthy.
That changed everything for her. One of the biggest adjustments was slowing down her stride between the first hurdles to 14. It was a game changer and put her in a class of her own since setting her first record on the final day of trials at the track in Eugene in 2021.
“Under Coach Kersey’s tutelage, I have grown as both a person and an athlete,” said Coach McLaughlin-Levrone. “He challenges me and pushes me in ways I never thought possible.”
Now, instead of a highly anticipated showdown with Femke Boll of the Netherlands, the question may shift to when the 50-second break will be broken in this race – possibly as early as August 8, when the Olympic final takes place in Paris.
“It could happen,” hurdler legend Edwin Moses told The Associated Press. “It might take a couple more races, but that’s it.”
