NEW YORK — The race did not unfold as Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone hoped. Once she crossed the finish line at Icahn Stadium, she lay down across the track and stretched her legs. She leaned against a fence and grimaced.
McLaughlin-Levrone had won the 400 meters at Sunday’s NYC Grand Prix, a distance that for her is a side quest. Acres of blue track separated her from the field. Despite a gusty wind blowing in her face on the homestretch, she had run one lap in 48.75 seconds — faster than any woman in the world all year, just 0.01 seconds off her best. And still she wanted more.
“The American record,” McLaughlin-Levrone said, a sheepish smile spreading across her face. “So close. But you know what? It’s all good. There’s so much time to do that.”
If there is anything that matches the galactic dominance of McLaughlin-Levrone in the universe of American track and field, it may be the expectations she heaps on herself. But erasing the 0.04 seconds that separate her personal best from Sanya Richards-Ross’s American record will have to wait.
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At the U.S. Olympic trials, which begin June 21 in Eugene, Ore., McLaughlin-Levrone will run only in the 400-meter hurdles, the event in which she has frequently and radically reset the world record since 2021. Having conquered that race, McLaughlin-Levrone, 24, had publicly considered switching events or trying for double individual golds at the Paris Olympics. But she declared earlier this season she would stick with her “bread and butter” and compete in the 400-meter hurdles and no other individual events, almost certainly along with a 4x400 relay spot.
McLaughlin-Levrone reiterated that decision this past weekend without much explanation. “That’s just kind of what we decided when the season began,” McLaughlin-Levrone said, referring to herself and coach Bobby Kersee. She missed the 2023 world championships because of a knee injury, but she said that was not a deciding factor in bypassing a chance to double.
There is little doubt McLaughlin-Levrone could pull off any feat she aimed for. At a Los Angeles meet in May, McLaughlin-Levrone dusted a 200-meter field that included Gabby Thomas, the reigning Olympic bronze medalist and the top American woman at the distance.
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“If she wanted to focus on the 200 meters, I’m sure she could get a medal in Paris,” Thomas said.
McLaughlin’s time of 22.07 seconds gave her the world lead in the 200 until Mississippi’s McKenzie Long won the NCAA championship this past weekend in 21.83. (Remember Long’s name at the trials this month — that time would have landed her on the U.S. Olympic team in 2021.)
McLaughlin-Levrone entered the flat 400 in New York for “an indicator of where we are and what we need to work on,” she said. In what amounted to a tuneup, she nearly set an American record.
McLaughlin-Levrone’s choice not to double may disappoint some in the sport. World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has in the past expressed hope for more top athletes to attempt multiple events at the Olympics because of how such ambitions create stars. When athletes become recurring characters, showing up on broadcasts night after night, their chances to transcend the sport improve.
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Noah Lyles will be happy to play that role. Lyles will enter the trials as the hands-down fastest man in the world after winning three gold medals — in the 100, 200 and 4x100 relay — at the world championships last summer.
Lyles aims to repeat the feat in Paris and appears to be on schedule. He ran 9.85 seconds in the 100 two weekends ago in Jamaica, losing by 0.02 seconds to Jamaican Oblique Seville, and found reason for optimism with his start, which is his relative weakness.
“I was seeing everything I was seeing back at world championships,” Lyles said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ It’s very satisfying to be here so early in the season.”
In New York this weekend, Lyles attended a private premiere of “Sprint,” a Netflix documentary that followed him and other elite sprinters — including Sha’Carri Richardson, the world champion in the women’s 100 — throughout the 2023 season. World Athletics worked with Netflix and the show’s producers in hopes the show will generate increased popularity in the same way “Drive to Survive” boosted Formula One.
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On the track, Lyles planned to claim the season’s best time in his first 200 of the year. A strong headwind Sunday kept him from topping the 19.67 that reigning Olympic silver medalist Kenny Bednarek ran last month in Qatar, but Lyles believed his winning time of 19.77 would have landed in the 19.5-second range in neutral conditions.
“I’m like, yeah, okay, we’re going into USAs, and we got a stronghold on all the events,” Lyles said.
Lyles probably could backpedal and make the Olympic team in the 200. The 100 will require more stress, although one of his main competitors in that event, Fred Kerley, will enter Eugene after turbulence.
On Sunday in New York, Kerley refused to run what would have been his final tuneup for the trials. He felt his blocks move as he settled into them, an issue other sprinters also noted. When it happened a second time, which led to another delay, Kerley determined his muscles had gotten cold and he would be risking injury if he ran.
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“Them blocks looked like elementary blocks,” Kerley said. “We’re at a professional meet, so you should have professional blocks.”
The controversy came after Kerley arrived at Icahn Stadium and pulled on Puma spikes even though he is sponsored by Asics. Or was — Asics announced afterward it no longer works with Kerley.
Kerley won the 2022 world championship in the 100, a validation of his silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics and seemingly a sign of his permanence among the world’s elite sprinters. At last year’s world championships, though, Kerley’s form broke down in the final 20 meters of a semifinal heat, and he failed to make the final. The performance “definitely motivated me,” he said. “I know what I left on the table.”
The U.S. trials will be Kerley’s chance to reclaim his place on a loaded team. The Tokyo Olympics saw a young cohort of American stars lead a generational shift to varying success: McLaughlin-Levrone and Athing Mu were spectacular, but U.S. men won no track gold medals for the first time at an Olympics. Those athletes have matured over the past three years and dominated the past two world championships, giving the U.S. team a chance to own Paris.
“This is such an amazing group,” McLaughlin-Levrone said. “. . . The possibilities are endless of what could happen. We are getting younger and younger, faster and faster. There is no ceiling.”
