American athlete Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has become the first woman in nearly 40 years to crack 48 seconds in the 400 meters.
As Sydney McLaughlin sprinted through the final heat of the 400-meter final, she looked to her right and saw a gap mounting between her and the competition, a sight she had not seen in a while.
Another runner. It was anyone’s race.
The simplest way to explain how McLaughlin-Levrone has achieved this feat, first accomplished by a woman in nearly 40 years, is that she was racing alongside Paulino, who also broke the 48-second mark, in the 400m on Thursday night on a wet track in Tokyo.
The final results were McLaughlin-Levrone 47.78 seconds. Paulino 47.98.
These times are the second and third fastest ever, only surpassed by Marita Koch’s record of 47.60 seconds, set in 1985 amid the East German doping scandal.
After winning the 400m race, she said, "You don't run something like that without amazing women pushing you to it."
The reason behind why McLaughlin-Levrone decided to run the flat 400m this season was because she wanted a new challenge after going undefeated in the 400m hurdles since taking silver at the 2019 worlds.
She entered the championship ranked third by best time of 2025 (48.90), behind Olympic silver medalist Salwa Eid Naser (48.67) and Paulino (48.81).
McLaughlin-Levrone gives credit for much of the victory to her coach, who had been a boxing athlete.
She says, ”My coach (Bobby Kersee) loves boxing terms. He said, 'You’ve got to go take the belt. It’s not yours. You’ve got to go earn it.’ That’s what we wanted to do today. There was a lot of doubt from a lot of people, I think, for me coming into this event.”
Though, McLaughlin-Levrone has not yet announced her plans going into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, she has not ruled out running both the flat 400m and 400m hurdles at a future global championship.
She told Lewis Johnson of NBC in an interview,“We’re going to talk about the schedule on that one.”
When asked about the LA 2028 plans, she replied, “I’m going to need some days off in there if that's the case because it’s tough fields in both events. You have to respect them. So, in order to put the best performances together, you have to make sure your body’s ready to do that.”
