Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone sets new world record: who else has run sub-51 seconds in the women’s 400m hurdles?

Sydney McLaughlin-Levron had three good reasons to celebrate on Thursday - first, she picked up the gold medal in the women’s 400m hurdles final, defending her Olympic title, and to put the seal on a perfect evening, she set a new world record - repeating what she did three years ago in Tokyo.

Track and field world records at Paris 2024

We’ve seen few world records tumble in track and field at Paris 2024. McLaughlin-Levrone’s registry was just the third to be set, after Team USA shaved half a second off the mixed 4 × 400 metres relay world record - one which they have held exclusively, four times since the event was officially recognized by the IAAF in 2019. And earlier this week, Sweden’s Armand Duplantis sets a new world best of 6.25 m in the pole vault.

It as clear that McLaughlin-Levron was something special from her school days. A child prodigy, she has been running 55-6 seconds in the 400m hurdles since the age of 14 and eventually broke the world youth record at the USATF junior championship in 2016, crossing the finishing line on 54.54 seconds.

Since then she has been improving her personal beat year-on-year. She took gold at the Tokyo 2020 Games, setting a new world record of 51.46 and followed that up by shaving another 0.05 off her record at the World Championships in Eugene the following year. At the same event, she became the first women in history to finish the 400m hurdles in under 51 seconds, clocking 50.68 on 22 July 2023.

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Femke Bol sets new European record

At this year’s championships in June, she lobbed another 0.03 off the record then a fortnight later, Femke Bol recorded the second fastest time in history, 50.95 seconds in La Chaux-de-Fonds to set a new European record and join McLaughlin-Levron as the only two athletes to have run sub-51 seconds in the women’s 400m hurdles.

With both women going head-to head in Paris, it promised to be one of the most fascinating contests of the Games. In the heats, McLaughlin-Levron qualified with a time of 53.60, then recorded 52.13 in the semifinals. Bol won her Round 1 heat with a time of 54.43 and also won the semifinal, improving on her earlier run by finishing on 53.91.

But in this evening’s final, no one looked like catching McLaughlin-Levron who left her competitors for dead. She crossed the line of 50.37, several meters ahead of her nearest rival Anna Cockrell, who took silver with a personal best of 51.87 with Bol just behind to take bronze on 52.15.

A new world record - the fourth sub-51 second finish in history and the 25th time the WR has been revised in two decades, when Russia’s Yuliya Pechonkina ran 52.34 in August 2003, a registry she held for almost 16 years.