McLaughlin-Levrone's world record caps Olympic Trials
Her 50.65 clocking betters previous best of 50.68 set in 2022 World Champs
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For the fifth time in her young but incredibly illustrious career, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone set a world record in the women’s 400-meter hurdles when she timed 50.65 seconds in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon, on Sunday.
Running in the final event on the final day of the eight-day meet, the 24-year-old McLaughlin-Levrone shaved three hundredths of a second off the world record of 50.68 that she had set in the 2022 World Athletics Championships while running on the same Hayward Field track at the University of Oregon.
That 50.68 effort had bettered McLaughlin-Levrone’s previous world record of 51.41 by such a large margin that plenty of track and field experts and fans alike wondered if it might stand for a decade or two. But she broke it less than two years later with her performance on Sunday.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” McLaughlin-Levrone told Lewis Johnson of NBC Sports. “I’m just amazed, baffled, and shocked.”
McLaughlin’s performance shattered her Trials record of 51.91 from 2021 that made her the first woman in history to have broken 52 seconds in the event. It also came in a depth-laden race in which second-place Anna Cockrell and third-place Jasmine Jones of USC ran 52.64 and 52.77, respectively, to move to seventh and eighth on the all-time U.S. performer list.
Cockrell’s time also moved her to 11th on the all-time world list, while NCAA champion Jones is now tied for 13th.
Shamier Little, the silver medalist in last year’s World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, finished fourth in 52.98 in the first race in history in which four women have run under 53 seconds. She was followed by Rachel Glenn of the University of Arkansas, who placed fifth in a personal best of 53.46, and Dalilah Muhammad, who was sixth in 54.27.
Muhammad, the 2016 Olympic champion and the silver medalist in the Games in Tokyo in 2021, was competing in what was expected to be the final Olympic Trials of her career.
McLaughlin-Levrone, who made her first Olympic team in 2016 following her junior year at Union Catholic Regional High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, sped to an early lead in the race on Sunday and continued to widen her advantage all the way to the finish line.
According to data on the meet website, she was .15 seconds ahead of second-place Cockrell at the first hurdle and the gap was .38 seconds at the fifth barrier. Her lead over Cockrell then increased by .11 to .13 seconds during each of the next three hurdles before her advantage widened by .27 seconds at hurdle nine and by .29 at hurdle 10.
With the crowd roaring in appreciation, McLaughlin-Levrone cleared the ninth hurdle in perfect stride. She altered her steps a little bit approaching the 10th barrier so she could clear it while leading with her right leg, but she negotiated it cleanly before continuing on and leaning across the finish line.
Her performance came in only her second 400 hurdle final of the year and comes after a 2023 season in which she had not run a race in the event while focusing her attention on the 400.
It also came a little less than 24 hours after she had cruised to a yearly world-leading time of 52.48 in her semifinal and three days after she had run an even easier-looking 53.07 in a first-round heat.
Her latest world record gives her the three fastest times in history, as well as four of the top five, six of the top eight, and seven of the top 10.
She has seven of the 11 sub-52 clockings ever run and the average of her top 10 times is a scintillating 51.63, a time that has been bettered only by McLaughlin-Levrone five times, and once each by Femke Bol of the Netherlands and Muhammad.
The 24-year-old Bol had dominated 400 hurdle landscape last year while McLaughlin-Levrone focused her attention on the 400, an event in which she lowered her personal best to 48.74 seconds while winning the USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships.
However, this season is unlike any that McLaughlin-Levrone has ever had as she has also run 22.07 in the 200, 48.75 in the 400, and 12.71 in the 100 hurdles.
If the past is any indication, McLaughlin-Levrone might not run another race until she competes in a first-round heat of the 400 hurdles in the Olympic Games in Paris on August 4.
The semifinals are scheduled for August 6 and the final will be held on August 8.
McLaughlin-Levrone has now set four of her five world records at Hayward Field, with three of them coming in national title races. She set her second world record of 51.46 in the Olympic Games in 2021 and her fourth of 50.68 in the World Championships in 2022.