Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone Breaks 50 seconds at Olympics in 400mh

Clearly she isn't quite yet ready for 14s, hence the 15 stride pattern.

To suggest she ran 15s because she must be doing that in practice, or it's 'weird' she ran 15s if she's been doing 14s in practice, is complete nonsense & shows a lack of understanding of the event.

What was interesting about this run was it demonstrated what a significant difference a stride pattern can do to your time: she opened in '22 with 14s, effectively 1 second faster than this. It just reinforces what a technical event this is, because going by her 20pm PB, McLaughlin appears to be her fastest ever on the flat. But you gotta control that in the hurdles!

It will be interesting to see what Bol opens with tomorrow in Stockholm. She'll presumably run 14s, but she has no Olympic Trials to peak for like McLaughlin, and won't be at her best until much closer to Paris.

"under races"

She's had 5 races since April 20. You have her mixed up with Athing Mu.

She runs 52.70 and some of you clowns think that she's washed.

I can't stand the poster TMADDSFwhateverhisacronymis but to quote him, "Expect great things."

We don’t know that she’s faster at 200 and 400 than she was in the summer of ‘22. She’s lowered her PRs since then, yeah, but she didn’t race any open 200s or 400s in 2022. She split 47.9 in the 4x4 in Tokyo, and she ran 22.39 in March 2018 when she was 18, so I’m sure she was capable of running plenty fast for those distances 2 years ago.

I've never seen Krusty the Clown and Kersee the Chemist in the same room.

Really makes you think.

I agree a sub-50 is unlikely, but I think it’s plausible she can go under 50.5 considering her age. When she ran 50.68, she was only 22, a couple weeks shy of turning 23. She turns 25 this summer, so I can see her lowering her WR this year or next.

For reference, here are the ages when the rest of the top 10 women all time (after Sydney and Femke) ran their personal bests:

• Muhammad - 31
• Pechonkina - 25
• Little - 26
• Walker - 26
• Demus - 28
• Batten - 26
• Buford-Bailey - 24
• Gunnell - 27

Average age: 26.6

Couple of things too. Concerning the debate of missteps, it costs more time than just time lost before the hurdle, but also after the hurdle. Simple reason you've lost rhythm and momentum and that's hard to regain after the hurdle wheras if you cleared it cleanly and in rhythm there is less braking action to recover from.

I'm also wondering if there is such a thing as having too much speed. We know Warholm doesn't rely on flat speed, he just goes hard in one gear the whole way and is so comfortable with that he just concentrates on technique. We also know 110 hurdlers do not like tailwind because it pushes them too fast.

SML's PB of 22.07 is .32 faster than the 22.39 she ran 6 years ago. So actually that speed may not be a new found thing, the evolution of training and age could account for that and she may have been that fast when she ran 50.68, so is that 22.07 even indicative of a faster hurdle time? I think maybe not, you can only go so fast before you're having to change your steps.

She doesn't race the hurdles enough to get the rhythm for sub 50 down. Based on her interview, she doesn't practice it enough either.

Speed is only half of the battle in the hurdles. She has to take less fewer steps than she did in her PR. That takes an incredible amount of work, she should have been working on that exact rhythm for 6+ months now - in smaller intervals building up to longer intervals approaching the Olympics.

It appears she just started to work on it now, so she has no chance at sub 50.

DOPED TO THE GILLS... SO TIRED OF IT ALL.
At the Games she faced unfounded allegations of drug use by the men's 800m 1984 Olympic gold medalist and 1988 Olympic silver medalist Joaquim Cruz.[21] This continued the following season in 1989 when Darrell Robinson accused her husband and coach, Bobby Kersee, of distributing performance-enhancing drugs.[22] Years later, doping insider Victor Conte asserted that in 1988 he personally witnessed an Olympic official at the Seoul games notifying Bobby Kersee that Joyner-Kersee had tested positive for PED use.[23]

What 5 races has she had?

She'll break 50 and do a mike drop.

She is pretty much unbeatable right now.

If she was 100% interested and mean, I suspect she could run over the hurdles while Bol ran the flat, and she'd win. The only one who can beat her, is her.

Splits are irrelevant. I don't know why people throw them out. Felix also had a 47s 400M split, but could only manage a 49 low 400M block start once. Within the past 12 months, Sydney has PBd in the 200/400. Proving that she is faster . Empirical evidence always transcends conjecture and suppositions.

Once Sydney is back to hurdling proficiently, I expect that she will lower her WR again because she has developed faster foot speed. The skill is now to control that speed and return to hurdling efficiency. I would love to see her lower her WR by running at least 49.87.

Your analytical ability is poor. Nothing has been "proven". You're just making an assumption that she is faster now than when she set the 400h world record 2 years ago. She never ran a 200 in 2022 so we have no idea how fast she would have run a 200 in 2022, so the "evidence" that you claim to love so much isn't there.

John Wesley Harding is correct. We have no idea if Sydney is faster right now than she was in 2022 or not. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't.

No, that's not it. The difference was that in 2022 she was pushing hard and yesterday she was taking it easy. She could have run faster than 52.70 if she was going all out.

Sir, this is the LRC forums. Please adhere to our grammar standards by using one of the following:

1)... could have ran

2)... could of run

Thank you.

I don't think it's that splits are irrelevant, it's that the conditions someone runs their best split are usually not replicated in a race. Both due to the fact that there's no chasing like that to be done, and the fact that even if someone jumped out on her at the beginning, if it was an open race she'd still stick to her race plan and see what she has left at the end. It's this judging of the race plan that widens the gap between most athlete's split PR and their actual PR. In a relay the adrenaline takes over. If you take athletes that run balls to the wall like Naser (irrespective of drugs), her open times are even better than her splits.

To summarise, their lack of transferring to open times is more due to race plans and other factors than it being a running start, in my opinion.

Thank you for providing this link. According to World Athletics, this is the 5th race that Sydney has run for the season:

April 20th: 4x100

May 4th: 100MH

May 4th: 200M

May 18th: 200M

May 31st: 400MH

You really don't know how sprints work do you? There is specific training that is required at every distance. The training for 100M is different than what is required for 200M from what is required for 400M. She did specific 200M training to improve her foot speed this year. This has made her faster as was demonstrated by her new PBs in the 200M/400M. Argument from ignorance is a fallacy and your attempting to employ it here makes it no less so.

Perhaps this will make it clear to you: That's like saying we don't know if Lyles is faster now at 100M than when he set the AR 200M in Eugene. Here's news for you - he is faster now at 100M than at that time.