McLaughlin-Levrone demolishes Bol to retain hurdles title with world record

As she entered the final bend of the women’s 400m hurdles final, Femke Bol was exactly where she wanted to be. She was right behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, just as her coach, Laurent Meuwly, had planned. “The goal for Femke is to stay as close to the straight as possible,” Meuwly said, and there she was, two-tenths behind. The problem was that it was the last time Bol was in the right place all night. McLaughlin-Levrone, the greatest women’s hurdler in history, ran stronger, harder, faster down the straight and immediately pulled away from Bol and everyone else, en route to her second Olympic gold medal and a rightful place as the greatest athlete of her time.

By the time McLaughlin-Levrone reached the 10th hurdle, she was running only her own world record, set at the U.S. Trials in June. She won that event, too. She finished in 50.37 seconds, which shaved 0.28 seconds off the old record. McLaughlin-Levrone was already the first athlete to break five world records in the same event. She is now the first to break a sixth. In three years, she has single-handedly shaved a best of two seconds off the world record. Or, to put it another way, she has shaved a full 3.5 percent off the record she held before she started running, which is double what Usain Bolt shaved off in the men’s 100 meters.

When McLaughlin-Levrone runs, we’re watching someone push the boundaries of athletic possibility in real time.

There was a sense that this final would be one of the big races of the Games. The stadium was covered in bright orange from all the Dutch fans who had come to watch, making it look like a big bag of Pick ‘n’ Mix with too many Jelly Tots in it. In the 50 years of running the women’s 400m hurdles, exactly 25 athletes have run under 53 seconds, three have run under 52 seconds and only two have run under 51 seconds, Bol and McLaughlin-Levrone, who were drawn next to each other in lanes five and six. Between them they had already run 14 of the 15 fastest times in history.

McLaughlin-Levrone had won their only two head-to-head races before this one, in the 2021 Olympic final and the World Championship final a year later. But since then, she’d struggled with a few different injuries and also experimented with a few different disciplines. She’d competed only in fits and starts. In the meantime, Bol had won just about everything. But as Meuwly also said before the race, the one thing she hadn’t experienced was being in a race against someone even faster than her. She did here, and it hurt.

Bol finished third. She was beaten by McLaughlin-Levrone’s American teammate Anna Cockrell, who ran a personal best of 51.87 sec. Bol finished in 52.15 sec., which, while well below the winning time, was still the 19th fastest in history. She was completely distraught afterward and walked away from the finish line in tears. In a different time and place, she would have been the best herself. She has what it takes. She proved it last Saturday when she won the Netherlands the gold medal in the 4x400m mixed relay with a stunning anchor leg that lifted the team from fourth place all the way to first.

But McLaughlin-Levrone is bigger again. In this race, Bol was really just there to put McLaughlin-Levrone’s performance into scale, like one of those little diagrams of a man drawn to let you know exactly how big the building in the photo really is.

It’s Bol’s misfortune that McLaughlin-Levrone chose to run the 400m hurdles. The truth is, she could have been almost anything she wanted to be on the track. Her personal bests in the 100m and 100m hurdles would have made her a contender for the final here in both events, her personal best in the 200m would have given her the silver medal behind Gabby Thomas, and in the 400m it would have made her the fastest qualifier for Friday night’s final. She’s talked about moving to the flat race, she’s already the 11th-fastest in history there. And she can do pretty much anything you ask her to do.

That tells you a little more about what makes her so great than you might think. Because one of the reasons McLaughlin-Levrone is so good at the 400m hurdles is that she can lead her jumps with either foot. While most hurdlers adjust their stride to ensure they have their preferred foot forward, McLaughlin-Levrone can take them as they come, switching between her left and right foot, without stuttering or tripping or breaking stride. It takes the coordination of a juggler to do it at speed. Her brain has to move as fast as her feet as she makes the adjustments to her stride at high speed.

With her sheer speed on the straight, her endurance in a single lap, and her impeccable technique, McLaughlin-Levrone is virtually unbeatable. Even for someone as brilliant as Bol. In the minutes after McLaughlin-Levrone crossed the finish line, someone in the crowd gave her a crown to wear, next to the American flag. It was a perfect fit.