McLaughlin-Levrone sets U.S. 400m bar in semis

TOKYO -- One grounds down, and possibly 1 much to spell for Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

McLaughlin-Levrone finished her 400-meter semifinal astatine the satellite championships Tuesday successful 48.29 seconds, shattering a 19-year-old American people held by Sanya Richards-Ross by .41 seconds.

It was the fastest clip of 2025, the seventh fastest clip ever, and it makes the thought of breaking the 40-year-old grounds of 47.60 look wholly imaginable successful the last Thursday.

"Honored, for sure," McLaughlin-Levrone said astir breaking the U.S. grounds she's been targeting since she moved implicit from the hurdles. "I decidedly wasn't expecting that time. It conscionable shows the fittingness is there. I'm excited for the finals and grateful to person taken down a grounds by an astonishing woman."

Richards-Ross, the champion American 400 runner of her generation, acceptable the grounds of 48.70 successful 2006 and won the 400 astatine the London Olympics six years later.

Now, each eyes are connected the people acceptable by an East German, Maria Koch, successful 1985. It is 1 of the fewer remaining records from the Eastern Bloc era. No pistillate has breached 48 seconds since Koch's record, and adjacent McLaughlin-Levrone said that should beryllium the archetypal extremity earlier reasoning astir the mark.

But McLaughlin-Levrone has a knack for breaking records. She's done it six times successful her "main" event, the 400 hurdles, which she took a interruption from this twelvemonth to spot what she could bash successful the 400 flat. Her grounds successful the hurdles stands astatine 50.37.

McLaughlin said that portion she was amazed to spot the 48.29 popular up connected a sultry nighttime successful the aforesaid stadium wherever she won the hurdles 4 years agone successful the Tokyo Olympics, "The past 30 meters were a small reserved."

"But it wasn't astonishing due to the fact that I cognize the enactment that has been enactment in. It's truly conscionable astir executing, and I'm grateful that it showed maine it's there."

She said she's been focusing connected grooming much than racing arsenic she hones her method nether the watchful oculus of manager Bobby Kersee.