2024 T&FN Women’s Athlete Of The Year — Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone

AS AN ACCOMPLISHED juggler*, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has no trouble keeping three balls in the air. She also effortlessly juggled events, posting Top 8 times in the world in three individual events in ‘24.

[*really, check it out.]

After a nearly 2-year hiatus from the 400H, McLaughlin-Levrone returned to her main event while keeping the 200 and 400 — and occasionally the 100H — in orbit. Our 50th Woman’s Athlete Of The Year became the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic 400H golds and also broke the World Record in a major championship — national or global — for the sixth time in a row with a scintillating 50.37. She has not lost a lap hurdles race since ’19.

“The event is just getting faster and faster,” said the Paris champion, who relentlessly surged away from silver medalist Anna Cockrell and bronze medalist Femke Bol on the homestretch. “There’s so much depth in it and I think it always keeps me on my toes.

“There’s so many different ways to run it, so many different stride patterns, so I love being able to just improve upon myself.”

Her sister-in-law put a tiara upon her head in Paris and even WA president Sebastian Coe crowned her with his own personal MVP award.

“It’s invidious to pick out one performance from Paris,” he said. “But I’m still trying to come to terms with what Sydney McLaughlin did on the track that day.”

Coe said he had not seen a “more definitive Olympic win since David Rudisha’s back in 2012,” which the erstwhile 800 WR holder admitted was “a bit closer to my heart.”

In ’22, when she also was voted AOY, McLaughlin-Levrone ran only 4 finals in her signature event. In ’24, she ran only 3!

Coming off a ‘23 campaign marred by injury — in which she won the U.S. flat 400 title but had to bow out of Worlds — McLaughlin-Levrone made her first appearances of ’24 as an author.

Far Beyond Gold: Running From Fear To Faith came out in January and McLaughlin-Levrone had a small book tour.

She opened her track season in April with a 4×1 leg and next clocked 22.38 in a 200 on May 04 along with a respectable 12.71 in the 100H.

Two weeks later she lowered her PR in the 200 to 22.07 in the LA Grand Prix, handling a field that included eventual Olympic champion Gabby Thomas.

On May 31, she ran her first 400H since August 08, 2022, posting 52.70 at the Moses Legends Meet in Atlanta.

McLaughlin-Levrone admitted that after the time away her mind was full of “just curiosity, to be honest. What leg’s going to come [up]? How’s it going to feel? How am I going to feel that last 200? And I think it answered a lot of questions for us.”

In her final tuneup before the Olympic Trials, McLaughlin-Levrone ran 48.75 for 400 in New York. Then it was back to Eugene, where she’d already broken the 400H WR 3 times. She ran 53.07 in the heats and 52.48 in the semis before slicing 0.03 off the WR in the final with a 50.65.

Coach Bob Kersee had told her to “not be afraid to take it out, to trust my fitness coming home and just execute my 10 hurdles. He always uses boxing phrases, so those were my Joe Fraziers today, the 10 hurdles.”

She added, “So in this analogy, I am Muhammad Ali.”

At the Olympics, McLaughlin-Levrone coasted to 53.60 in the first round and 52.13 in the semis — the fastest non-final ever. Then came that incredible 50.37 on the day after her 25th birthday.

“You never really know what’s going on behind you, and you never know how close anybody is with the crowd screaming like that,” she said.

On the Games’ final in-stadium competition evening, in the 4×4 final McLaughlin-Levrone opened up a similar gap on the second leg with a 47.70 split, en route to her second gold in Paris and fourth overall.

She noted that at her first Games in Rio, she didn’t medal and in Tokyo there was no crowd due to the pandemic, “so I think this was my first real Olympics and I’m grateful for that in its fullness.”

Now she’s knocking on the door of a 49-second performance. When Dalilah Muhammad broke the 16-year-old WR at the ’19 USATF Championships, McLaughlin-Levrone —who finished 0.68 back at 52.88 — recalled being “just baffled seeing 52.2, and we’ve taken it so far and I have to credit these ladies next to me [Cockrell and Bol] for helping do that.

“I think this is an event that wasn’t very popular, but we made it very popular very quickly. And I do think 49 is possible and I do think the talent sitting in front of you can do that. I think we push each other to do that and get better and improve and find ways to lower these times that we for so long thought were impossible.

“I don’t know when it’s possible, but I do think it’s out there, for sure.”

And her other events remain out there as well. McLaughlin-Levrone explained that she enjoys the 200 and 400 because it’s fun to challenge herself. “One teaches me how to sprint, the other teaches me how to sprint and be patient,” she said.

It’s no secret that McLaughlin-Levrone is chasing Marita Koch’s flat 400 WR, 47.60 from ’85, but could she see herself doing an individual event other than her hurdles specialty at the Olympics? “I don’t know that I can give a definitive yes or no,” she has said. “I do love doing other events. There’s other events that I haven’t done since high school that I’d also love to do.”

In high school, she also was a long jumper with a best of 6.29 (20-7¾).

Of her Olympic season that finished with a 400 (49.11) and 200 (22.40) pairing in two specially added non-Diamond races at the DL Final, she observed, “I think the biggest thing was staying healthy, after last season not getting to compete at Worlds. I still battled some of those knee injuries, early this season. We really had to take it one week at a time, one month at a time and make up the schedule as we went.”

She also has a more philosophical take on the season just past: “I think I’ve learned to really just enjoy these opportunities God’s given me because this sport doesn’t last forever. And as much as I want to be serious and focused, I know that this time in my life is very short, and so [I’m] just cherishing these moments with my team and my people, because I know that one day I’m going to retire and I’m not going to get them back. So I’m really learning to just embrace these moments.”