How Sydney McLaughlin Beat Her Own World Record to Win Gold (Published 2021) (2024)

TOKYO — In one of the most anticipated head-to-head showdowns of the Games, Sydney McLaughlin set another world record, beating her closest rival and the defending gold medalist, Dalilah Muhammad, in the women’s 400-meter hurdles by a razor-thin 0.12 seconds. On a fast track at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium, McLaughlin, 21, finished in a time of 51.46 seconds, shaving 0.44 seconds off her own world record.

Muhammad’s silver medal-winning time was her personal best, at 51.58 seconds. Femke Bol of the Netherlands won bronze, finishing with a time of 52.03 seconds, also a personal best.

Here’s how the race unfolded (press play):

Muhammad got out to an early lead, which is her style, but it was only the slimmest of margins over McLaughlin, who trailed Muhammad until finally overtaking her rival in the final meters.

McLaughlin was the fastest of the three medalists from the ninth hurdle to the finish line, using her stamina and speed to capture the gold.

It was a fast race across the board. Five of the seven finishers beat their personal-best times. (Anna co*ckrell of the United States was disqualified.)

Race start

Muhammad was the first to clear the initial hurdle, which she nearly always is. But McLaughlin was almost as fast, touching down a split second later. McLaughlin is the faster finisher, so Muhammad probably needed more of a cushion.

On the backstretch

At Hurdle 4, along the backstretch, Muhammad built on her lead, finishing her hurdle while McLaughlin had just taken off. McLaughlin appeared nearly neck and neck with Bol, the bronze medalist.

The final turn

By the last turn, Muhammad still had a sizable lead of at least a step over McLaughlin at Hurdle 8. But, according to Ralph Mann, a consultant to U.S.A. Track & Field, McLaughlin “ran the last three hurdles much better than she’s ever run them before.”

To the finish

McLaughlin didn’t come off the ninth hurdle as well as she could have, and she had to stretch to get to Hurdle 10. Here, she had a choice: Take long strides, or take stutter steps to clear the hurdle. If McLaughlin had stutter-stepped, she would not have had the momentum to overtake Muhammad in the final straightaway, according to Mann.

Muhammad still had a lead coming over the final hurdle, but would it be enough to stave off McLaughlin, who tends to run faster in those final meters? The answer was no, by 0.12 of a second.

Using her sprint-first approach, Muhammad had set a new standard for hurdling strategy and technique, and in 2019, she broke a world record in the event that had stood for 16 years.

In the past three years alone, following her example, other hurdlers also passed that old world-record time, including McLaughlin, who has now set the past two world marks.

The rivalry between the two American hurdlers has grown steadily in that time. McLaughlin first bested Muhammad’s world record mark in June at the U.S. Olympic trials.

“It’s going to be interesting for the next three years,” said Dr. Mann. “We’re going to see some real rivalry here, and each of them know what they need to work on: Dalilah is going to be pounding the end of that race, and Sydney is going to be trying to get her start speed up.”

Methodology

The Times recorded the position of the top three finishers in a sequence of more than 100 photographs taken every five-hundredths of a second to determine the speed of each athlete throughout the final stretch of the race. Speeds were calculated by combining the positions of the athletes with timestamp information from the images.