Sydney McLaughlin Broke Her Own World Record. Again.

Muhammad, who used to own the world record until McLaughlin came along, is an Olympic and world champion. And while injuries have interrupted her training, she is still a fearsome athlete at 32.

“I was kind of nervous, honestly, going into this meet, not knowing where my fitness level would be,” Muhammad said. “So to get a medal shows my resilience as an athlete.”

Bol, 22, who won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics behind McLaughlin and Muhammad, could be the contemporaneous rival who pushes McLaughlin through the 2024 Paris Olympics, and perhaps beyond. Bol owns the seventh-fastest time in history. (The six times ahead of her belong to McLaughlin and Muhammad.)

But there is still a gap between McLaughlin and Bol, one that was evident as early evening shadows fell across the track at Hayward Field and McLaughlin opened up an enormous lead by the halfway point. Her romp down the homestretch might as well have been a victory lap. No one was close to her.

“I would definitely say it’s a flow state,” she said, “where you’re putting everything that you’ve done in practice into the race to the point where you’re just letting your body do what it does.”

McLaughlin, who grew up in central New Jersey and was a teenage prodigy at Union Catholic High School, is quite simply the fastest women’s 400-meter hurdler in history. After breaking Muhammad’s world record in 2021 at the U.S. Olympic trials, McLaughlin broke it again a few weeks later when she won gold at the Tokyo Olympics. Muhammad finished second in both races.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/sports/sydney-mclaughlin-400-hurdles.html