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For the better part of two years, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone all but disappeared from the 400-meter hurdles course. Turns out, she wasn’t hiding or looking for something else to do. Just getting better at what she does best. The 24-year-old Olympic champion lowered the world record for the fifth time Sunday, closing out U.S. Olympic trials with 10 leaps over the barriers, then an all-out sprint toward the finish line in 50.65 seconds. She broke her last record by .03 seconds.
This one came on the last day of trials at Hayward Field. Her first record came back in 2021 — also on the last day of trials and also at Hayward Field. In fact, this marked the fourth of her five world records she’s set on the track at the University of Oregon, which has hosted the lion’s share of American track’s greatest moments over the past quarter century. To say she expected this, though, would not be the case. “Just shock. Honestly shock,” said McLaughlin-Levrone, who covered her mouth in amazement when she crossed and saw the time. “I know when it first came up it said, ‘50.67.’ I was like, ‘There’s just no way.’” Then, the clock adjusted down two ticks. “I wasn’t expecting that time,” she said. Counting the two preliminary rounds at trials this week, this was only McLaughlin-Levrone’s fourth 400-meter hurdles race of the season. Unlike other times when she’s taken the track, there wasn’t a huge amount of buzz about her mark of 50.68 — set at world championships in 2022, also here at Hayward — going down this time. A closer look shows this was all simply part of the plan. She spent her time working on the shorter hurdles, along with 200- and 400-meter sprints, both of which she had hinted might be in her future as her main event. Really, what all those races were doing were making her better at her main job. All of them are good for speed. The short hurdles helped her master the difficult art of jumping off either foot. “She ran in Atlanta, and she was having problems attacking the hurdles and getting her steps together” because of all her newfound speed, hurdling great Edwin Moses said of McLaughlin-Levrone’s first 400-hurdles race of 2024. “I told her I’d had similar problems and that her brain just had to catch up with her physicality.”