“Bobby, your girl is doing a really good job,” Moses said.
“Hey,” replied Kersey, “having chased you all these years, I learned a little something about the event.”
Moses considered the comment a high compliment. Kersey once coached athletes who tried in vain to conquer Moses in the ’70s and ’80s as he won 122 consecutive 400-meter hurdles over 10 years.
Musa said, “He put everything he learned from training men to beat me and put it in it.” “I took it all in.”
After decades of searching, Kersee has found an athlete who might one day challenge the accomplishments of Moses—or any other runner who has ever linked to a pair of track runners. On Friday night at the World Championships, McLaughlin drastically reset the world record she’d played over the past year, separating herself further from the long-lost group, elevating Hayward Field’s trajectory into a kind of fantasy.
At the beginning of 2021, not a single woman had ever run around a racetrack and more than 10 hurdles were faster than 52 seconds. McLaughlin has broken the record four times since then. She lowered it to 50.68 as the sun set over the gleaming stadium, breaking her own record by 0.73 seconds.
McLaughlin’s time had defeated two women in the 400m final on Friday. one without obstacles. On NBC, analyst Atto Bolden immediately hailed it as the best track and field performance he’s ever seen. In the formula the world uses in athletics to evaluate points in all events from pole vaults to pitches, McLaughlin’s 50.68 was second only to Florence Griffith Joyner’s record in the 100-meter sprint.
“It’s a flow state,” McLaughlin said. “Just put practically everything you’ve done into the race, to the point where you allow your body to do what it does. You don’t think too much. You just release the gifts and talents that God has given you.”
Only 22, McLaughlin stays on a higher plane during her event. Even in a meeting Noah Lyles made one of Usain Bolt’s records shiver And Athing Mu solidifying her supremacy at 800 metres, McLaughlin stands behind no one in the field and field hierarchy in the United States.
“It’s the prototype of the event,” Moses said.
McLaughlin has already set her gaze on new worlds to conquer. She revealed that she and Kersee had discussed moving to a new event – the 400m or 100m hurdles – or even adding an event and trying for a double individual medal. The schedule for the 2023 World Championships and the 2024 Paris Olympics will allow her to run the 400m hurdles and 400m flat.
“Bobby always comes up with new ideas, so it’s hard to pinpoint an idea,” McLaughlin said. “There’s talk of doubles, there’s talks about switching. Honestly, I don’t have any clue. It’s something we’ll go home after the season, discuss, see what we want to do.”
If McLaughlin moved on, she made her last 400m hurdles an ode to the event. Beginning at Lane 5, McLaughlin met everyone outside of her in the middle of a back stretch. Around the second turn, I passed everyone. When the last turn came, she had already blown it. After she overcame the last hurdle, a red-brick track separated her from Dutchman Vimek Paul and American bronze medalist Dalila Muhammed, the friendly contender with McLaughlin’s record. US Olympic trials last year And she never looked back.
“I definitely thought 50 would be possible,” Mohammed said. “After this race, I think 49 is possible.” I stopped. For Sydney.
Already twice Olympic gold medalistMcLaughlin is now a world champion in a way that is hard for those immersed in the sport to understand. Then McLaughlin sat on the track on her backside, her legs burning, her mouth fainting, as she processed what she had done.
“A lot of the time, the race goes by and you forget what’s going on,” McLaughlin said. “I really wanted to sit there for a moment and enjoy it all.”
With McLaughlin cementing her status as a legend, another has made a surprising comeback. A week after it was announced She ran her last race With the United States winning bronze in the 4×400 mixed relay at the start of the World Championships, Alison Felix will come out of short-lived retirement and compete in Saturday’s preliminary round of the women’s 4×400 relay, a USA spokesperson said.
Friday Night King McLaughlin. She made it to the 2016 U.S. Olympic team at the age of 16, wrapped in greatness from the moment she started over hurdles in Dunlin, NJ by 2019, though she still didn’t beat Muhammad, who set the world record during Beating McLaughlin in the World Championships.
During the pandemic layoff, McLaughlin turned coaches on Kersey, the legendary figure who trained his wife Jackie Joyner, Kersey, Griffith Joyner, and Felix. Kirsi is unconventional and famous for ordering. He instructed McLaughlin to watch an old movie of Moses, and shifted her rhythm from 15 to 14 steps between obstacles. She entered the 60-meter and 100-meter hurdles early in the season.
“Bobby accepts people who want to come to camp and who know who they are coming to deal with,” said Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who became a mentor to McLaughlin. “No one will change. If you are going to work with Bobby, you have to take all the good and all the evil that comes with it.”
McLaughlin was dominant and sophisticated, reticent to the celebrity embrace. She married Andre Levrone Jr. , a brief NFL receiver, this spring, which she has widely documented on social media. Otherwise, she shares little of herself in public other than athletic intelligence and dedication to her faith.
“I’ve been given a gift and a platform, but it’s not for my glory,” McLaughlin said. “It has helped me stay away from a lot of things that can get me in trouble. … I limit my social media. I limit how much I am on these things. Because in the end they can’t help me when I get on that line” .
McLaughlin glow in the lumps. Passion rarely appears on the track, even after you have crossed the finish line. In a lane on Friday night, Mohammed smiled and waved to the crowd at his introduction. When McLaughlin’s name bounced on the public address to loud cheers, she stared at the ground, her face unchanged.
“It doesn’t mess,” Moses said. “She sees, but she doesn’t. I can tell. Her mind is so focused that she can see through you. That’s how I was. I didn’t care.”
The 400m hurdles is a landmine sailing race. Moses on the course saw an opportunity to make 31 mistakes – starting and then taking off, flying and landing over all 10 hurdles. Runners rarely stumble across obstacles, but any lack of form can knock out a competitor. McLaughlin has the sportsmanship to jump off either foot, and her strength and speed make her sinisterly effective. They make complex racing seem simple.
“It doesn’t seem to be moving that fast,” Moses said. “Sydney looks like it’s barely doing any work at all.”
McLaughlin removed all the drama from her race, but in the women’s javelin final she made up for American Kara Wenger. On her sixth and final throw, following the prodding of the home crowd, Winger fired a 64.05-meter (210 ft 1 in) throw that propelled her from fifth to second. Winger’s formidable gift has given US women’s medals in all four throwing events. At the age of 36, Wenger saw her last throw at a major tournament as she presented her first medal.
When McLaughlin took her event to new heights, Michael Norman returned to his 400th career. Norman won the gold with a daring final race, beating a crowded field in 44.29 seconds. Around the final turn, Norman raced with Grenada’s Kirani James, Britain’s Matt Hudson Smith and South African world record holder Wade Van Niekerk. Norman made a small advance and stopped them all, raising his arms above his head.
“I just want to thank all the people who have stayed with me for the past three years,” Norman said.
Norman became one of America’s most promising sprinters in 2019, tying Jeremy Wariner as the fourth fastest man ever with a time of 43.45 seconds. But he lost the United States Championship that year to Fred Curley and failed to reach the final at the World Championships due to injury. In Tokyo, Norman entered as the frontrunner but finished disappointingly fifth before saving his Olympics by winning the gold medal in the 4×400 relay. Still only 24 years old, Norman is once again on top of the world.
It was a good night for the American guys who once ran around the track. After adding to their disastrous history in Tokyo, the US men’s 4×100 team — Christian Coleman, Noah Lyles, Elijah Hall and Marvin Prause Williams — achieved a single lap at 37.87, the fastest time in the world this year, in a preliminary round. In a display of their chemistry, Lyles then led them in an impromptu group rap song to Meek Mill’s Dreams and Nightmares.
“Nice day at the office,” Williams Prause said. “We’re just having fun.”
The show stopped once McLaughlin climbed onto the blocks. She is only 22 years old. A gold medalist and world champion, she is an athlete who performs at a level few of her peers can imagine, let alone know. She can broaden her athletic horizon, continue to push her major to new heights, or both. She achieved greatness at a very young age, yet she is still not satisfied.
“I think there’s still more to go on,” McLaughlin said. “I think we all figured out that, yes, there are 10 hurdles, but we can run them a lot faster than people think. There is no such thing as a perfect race.”
It may be so. But no one has ever come close to Sidney McLaughlin, the 22-year-old who owns it and still wants more.
