Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone breaks world document at Olympic trials: ‘Something is feasible in Christ’
By Joshua Doering Jul 1, 2024
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone poses after breaking her personal world document on June 30, 2024. (AP Picture/Charlie Neibergall)
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone put her palms over her mouth when she noticed the time: 50.65. Even she might barely consider she’d broken her own world record in Sunday’s 400-meter hurdles last, the final race on the U.S. Olympic trails.
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50.65! A NEW WORLD RECORD FOR SYDNEY MCLAUGHLIN-LEVRONE 👏 #TrackFieldTrials24 pic.twitter.com/j57bj8qIgY
— NBC Sports activities (@NBCSports) July 1, 2024
Her earlier document of fifty.68 seconds was set on the same track, Hayward Area, on the world championships two years in the past. She now owns seven of the 10-fastest times within the historical past of the occasion.
Talking with NBC instantly after the race, McLaughlin-Levrone pointed to her religion in God — like she’s completed so many occasions throughout her outstanding profession — as the one approach to clarify what she’d simply completed.
“Truthfully, reward God, I used to be not anticipating that,” she said. “Something is feasible in Christ. I’m simply amazed, baffled and in shock.”
After profitable the flat 400 meters on the U.S. observe and discipline championships final summer time, McLaughlin-Levrone selected to finish her season early so she might get well from a knee harm and be totally wholesome for the Olympics. That meant lacking the world championships, the most important occasion exterior of the Olympics for observe and discipline athletes.
The 2-time gold medalist, who’s featured on the quilt of the Summer season 2024 version of the Sports Spectrum Magazine, mentioned on the Sports Spectrum Podcast in January that the harm pressured her to depend on her religion much more.
“I feel simply this previous season of being injured, not with the ability to carry out at my greatest, and actually having to lean on the Lord in all of this was only a nice reminder that not every part is all the time going to be excellent,” McLaughlin-Levrone mentioned on the podcast. “Not every part’s going to go your manner.”
She went again to her specialty — the 400m hurdles — for the Olympic trials and can try to defend her gold medal from 2021 when the Paris Olympics start later this month. The opening ceremony is July 26, and the primary spherical of the ladies’s 400m hurdles is Aug. 4 with the ultimate happening Aug. 8.
Away from the observe, McLaughlin-Levrone wrote a book referred to as “Far Beyond Gold: Running From Fear to Faith,” which was launched in January. Within the e book, she shares her testimony and talks about how her relationship with Christ has helped her battle perfectionism and nervousness.
McLaughlin-Levrone told Sports Spectrum back in 2021 that there was a degree the place observe was her identification. As her religion has grown, she has discovered contentment in Christ it doesn’t matter what is occurring on the observe.
“In a sport the place you’re actually chasing gold on a regular basis, I might take my love for Christ and that relationship over a gold medal any day,” she mentioned on the podcast.
This might be McLaughlin-Levrone’s third Olympics. She reached the semifinals of the 400m hurdles as a excessive schooler in 2016 and set a world record within the last of the occasion on the Tokyo Olympics. She additionally gained a gold medal as a part of the 4x400m relay workforce in Tokyo.
“No matter [2024] brings, I’m going to stay to the identical script of going on the market to honor and glorify Him and leaving all of it on the market on the observe and no matter occurs, occurs,” she mentioned on the podcast.
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