Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone Eyes 400m Flat Challenge, Hints at Future Hurdles Return

When you examine Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s résumé in the 400m hurdles, you would think she’s ticked every box. The American is a two-time Olympic champion in the event, she also won gold at the 2022 world championships in Eugene, even the world record never seems safe when she’s part of the field. Across a 13-month span (2021-22), McLaughlin-Levrone clocked the fastest time in history four times, becoming the first woman to break the 52-second and 51-second barriers. She even defended her Olympic title in Paris last year in a new world record time (50.37s). Is it therefore a case of ‘been there, done that’, you wonder, in the 26-year-old deciding to switch her attention to the 400m flat for the 2025 world championships in Tokyo? Not quite.“I mean, there’s still more I’d love to achieve in the hurdles,” McLaughlin-Levrone told reporters during a call on Thursday. “That’s the funny thing about track and field is there’s always something you can do better, so I don't think that's it at all.”The 400m flat is by no means a fresh experiment in McLaughlin-Levrone’s case. She ran her first professional 400m race at a Diamond League meet in Paris in June 2023 where she finished runner-up to Dominican runner Marileidy Paulino. However, with an ill-timed knee injury forcing her to withdraw from the 2023 worlds in Budapest, she just had to give it another shot.“I do love to challenge myself in different ways. In 2023, I didn’t get to fully fulfill that challenge to myself because of my knee injury which kept me out of the worlds. And so it’s definitely something I knew I wanted to come back to. And I’ve loved the idea of stepping out into different events, challenging myself, pushing myself, seeing if I can be the best well rounded athlete I can before I hang up my spikes. And so, this was a huge challenge, a huge undertaking, and I’ve learned so much this season about the 400, about myself, about how it’s so different from the hurdles. But I’ve loved every second of it and I think that challenge is what makes me a competitor,” she said.Not just any competitor though. Such is McLaughlin-Levrone’s athletic prowess that the times she clocks in the 400m hurdles make her a force to be reckoned with even in the 400m flat. Asked how she felt about the transition to an event where the world record (47.60s) was set by East Germany's Marita Koch during an era of systematic doping by East German athletes, McLaughlin-Levrone preferred to focus on the expectations her own performances have raised. “Yeah, it’s a long standing sprint record for sure, very fast time,” she said. “Over the past few years, the performances that we have put on have created an appetite for records whenever I step on the track, which to a degree, I guess is fair. But at the same time, those come when they come."I think especially an event like the 400, it takes time, it takes a lot of learning the event. There's always a question when I run: 'Is she going to break something today? Is the American record going to fall? The world record?' or whatever it is, which I think is exciting for the sport and fair for people to desire. But honestly, I just want to be the best track athlete I can be. And if that means it takes time to get faster in the 400, if it takes years, whatever it is, I want to work to do that.”As for the plan for her home Olympic Games in Los Angeles three years from now, McLaughlin-Levrone is keeping her rivals guessing.“The 400 hurdles, the 400, they’re so different in so many ways. But I think that’ll be a decision that we make as we get closer,” she said.