U.S. women tear up the track to claim 4×400 relay gold

SAINT-DENIS, France–At the end of the night, the end of nine glorious days and nights in which they left the rest of the world behind, America’s golden girls, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas, led their U.S. teammates Shamier Little and Alexis Holmes on one final lap of honor around Stade de France Saturday.

As the quartet jogged through their encore, a cool breeze lifted up the American flags that draped them as if they were wings.

On a final night of the Olympic Games track and field competition when Kenyan miler Faith Kipyegon and Team USA’s men’s 4×400 relay made Olympic history and Grant Fisher became the first U.S. distance runner ever to medal in two events in the same Games, McLaughlin-Levrone, Thomas, Little and Holmes soared to a place no women had been, even dared to think about, since the sport’s dark period of state sponsored systemic doping before the Iron Curtain came tumbling down.

With an American record shattering time of 3 minutes, 15.27 seconds Team USA just missed breaking world record of 3:15.17 set by the Soviet Union at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, a mark that has lingered in the record books, in need of an asterik in the minds of many, for 36 years seemingly untouchable.

Until now.

The U.S. women’s triumph was a three-minute reminder to a stunned stadium of how a generation of women, led first and foremost McLaughlin-Levrone, have forced the sport to rethink records and barriers long considered unapproachable.

The lasting legacy of these Games will not be how fast McLaughlin-Levrone and Co. have run or how high they’ve jumped but how they changed minds.

“This generation of track and field is on a different level,” McLaughin-Levrone said. “Everything is improving: including us, the technique and how we prepare. I don’t think anything is impossible at this point, and we continue to prove that every time we step on the track.”

McLaughlin-Levrone have been joined in defying the impossible by Kipyegon, Ukranian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh, Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis and U.S. shot putter Ryan Crouser, all who in recent years have smashed decades’ old world records and mind blowing barriers.

On the same afternoon at the Paris Diamond League meet on July 7, Mahuchikh and Kipyegon set world records within minutes of each other: the Ukranian soaring 6-feet, 10 3/4 to break the global mark set by Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova 37 years ago, Kipyegon lowering her own 1,500 record to 3:49.04. In July 2023, Kipyegon knocked nearly five seconds off the mile world record running 4:07.64.

“Absolutely amazing,” said Great Britain’s Laura Muir, the Olympic 1,500 silver medalist in Tokyo. “I don’t even know what to say. She’s absolutely phenomenal.

Saturday night was another record setting night for the Kenyan as she won the 1,500 in an Olympic record 3:51.29 for her third gold medal in the event joining Crouser and Belgian heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam as three-peating at the Paris Games.

“It’s a big, big achievement. I was really looking forward to defending my title (from Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020), and I had a dream,” Kipyegaon said. “Amazing to me, I completed it. I’m so, so happy.”This is history. I managed to make history. I’ve done it.”

Like McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400 hurdles, Kipyegon has forced her competitors to raise their games. The next three runners behind her, Australia’s Jessica Hull (3:52.56), Great Britain’s Georgia Bell (3:52.61) and Diribe Welteji of Ethiopia (3:53.11) were also under Kipyegon’s previous Olympic record from Tokyo.

“I envisioned it being a battle, four of us at the top of the straight. I was like, ‘I’m not going to be the one going home without a medal,’” Hull said. To see Georgia come through, it’s pretty incredible, we’ve just come second and third behind the greatest of all time, it’s just most surreal.”

Muir ran more than a second (3:53.37)  than she did in claiming the silver medal in Tokyo but could no better than fifth in Paris.

“The standards have gone crazy,” Muir said.

No one, however, has done more to raise the sport’s standards than McLaughlin-Levrone.

These have been the Sydney Olympics.

Thursday she set her sixth world record in the past three years, defending her 400 hurdles gold medal in 50.37 seconds. In an event where the world record sat at 52.35 from August 2003 to July 2019, McLaughin-Levrone has smashed through the 52 and 51 second barriers and is now on the verge of breaking 50 seconds as well.

“I do think 49 is possible,” she said.

Saturday another sold-out crowd wondered what she would do on a flat 400 in the relay.

By the time McLaughlin-Levrone and her teammates took the track for the competition’s grand finale it had already been a big night for Team USA.

Masai Russell won a 100 meters hurdle final in which the first three runners finished within three-hundredths of a second within each other: Russell at 12.33 just ahead of France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela (12.34) and Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, the defending Olympic champion (12.36).

American Shelby McEwen finished deadlocked for first with New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr at the end of the high jump only to have Kerr win the gold medal in the second round of a jump off.

Fisher and half-miler Bryce Hoppel completed the greatest Olympics in American middle and long distance running. Four days after Cole Hocker, Yared Nuguse and Hobbs Kessler went 1-3-5 in the 1,500 final, Hoppel became the first American under 1:42, running 1:41.67 for fourth in the 800 final.

It’s worth pointing out that with Hocker’s victory in Paris coupled with Matthew Centrowitz’s 1,500 victory at the 2016 Games, that since the 1992 Olympics U.S. men have won more gold medals in the metric mile than they have in the 4×100 relay.

Fisher, with a late kick, duplicated his 10,000 meter bronze medal finish earlier in the Games with a 5,000 bronze at 13:15.13 to become the first American to medal in both events in the same Olympics. In fact it was the first time Americans medaled in both events since 1964 when Billy Mills won the 10,000 and Bob Schul and Bill Dellinger went 1-3 in the 5,000.

Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen rebounded from a disappointing fourth place finish in the 1,500 to win the 5,000 in 13:13.66.

With Kenneth Rooks picking up a silver medal in the 3,000 steeplechase earlier in the Games, the U.S. distance crew leaves Paris with a record five medals.

Rai Benjamin, winner of the 400 hurdles Friday night, held off Botswana’s Leslie Tebogo, the new Olympic 200 champion in the 4×400 relay to give a U.S. squad running without injured 400 gold medalist Quincy Hall an Olympic record 2:54.43 to 2:54.53 victory to set the stage for the women’s relay.

Benjamin split 43.18, Tebago 43.04.

In what has almost become a prerequisite for Olympic relays there was some controversy surrounding the U.S. team.

Kendall Ellis, the former USC NCAA champion and Olympic Trials 400 winner, said on social media Saturday that she was told she was being left off the team only minutes before the race.

“Imagine being told this morning that you were running the finals of the 4×4 just to be told minutes before call time that you’re not,” Ellis wrote.

She didn’t say if she was given a reason for the change.

Little led off for the U.S. women in 49.45, handing the baton and the lead off to McLaughin-Levrone, who in turn put the race out of reach with a 47.71 split.

The only time the U.S. was threatened was when McLaughlin-Levrone nearly clipped Thomas’s heel on their exchange. Thomas stayed on her feet adding another gold medal to her 200 and 4×100 wins to become these Games only triple track triple gold medalist. By the time she finished her 49.30 leg the crowd’s focus had turned to just how much the U.S. would win by.

It was almost an afterthought when spectators turned to the scoreboard to see that the U.S. had not only beat Netherlands (3:19.50) by more than four seconds, they had just missed the Soviet’s world record.

A record that now seems on borrowed time. Add Athing Mu, the Tokyo 800 gold medalist who was tripped in the Trials final and did not make the team, to the quartet and the Soviet mark could go as soon as next year’s World Championships.

McLaughlin-Levrone’s relay leg further confirmed that an even older world record, Marita Koch of East Germany’s 400 standard of 47.60 set in 1985, is also in jeopardy. And what might she do in the 200, an event she comfortably beat Thomas in Los Angeles in May. Or the 800 or 100 hurdles?

Netherlands hurdler Femke Bol is among those who has reached times chasing McLaughlin-Levrone not so long thought unimaginable.

Late Saturday night she thought about Games that McLaughlin-Levrone, Thomas, Kipyegon, Duplantis and Mahuchikh gave wings to and repeated the primary lesson of the Sydney Olympics.

“Nothing,” she said, “is impossible anymore.”