Sydney blazes to second fastest 400m time ever

World Championships or Olympics, hurdles or flat, trust Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to own the one lap races like few have in history.

- Rutvick Mehta

Sure enough, the Sydney show was a blockbuster even at the Tokyo worlds. Not in the 400m hurdles where is a six-time world record holder and two-time Olympic champion, but in the 400m flat in which she grabbed her first gold at a major global competition.

And in some style. The American star ran the second fastest time ever, and the first sub-48s time in more than four decades, as she won the women’s 400m final clocking 47.78s. It shattered the previous Worlds record, and lowered the 48-second bar for the first time since the 1983 Worlds in which Jarmila Kratochvilova of erstwhile Czechoslovakia ran 47.99s.

Giving McLaughlin-Levrone company in also lowering the bar and running a fast race was the reigning 400m Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino of Dominican Republic, whose 47.98 is the third fastest time in history but only fetched silver on the day. Two women, for the first time ever, went below 48 seconds in the same 400m race. Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser took bronze at 48.19.