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 teammates Shamier Little and Alexis Holmes on one final lap of honor around Stade de France on Saturday night.
As the quartet jogged through their encore, a cool breeze lifted 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 to medal in two events in the same Games, McLaughlin-Levrone, Thomas, Little and Holmes soared to a place no women had been, or even dared to think about, since the sport’s dark period of state-sponsored systemic doping until the Iron Curtain came tumbling down.
With an American record-shattering time of 3 minutes, 15.27 seconds, Team USA just missed breaking the 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 asterisk in the mind 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 that have long been considered unapproachable.
The lasting legacy of these Games will not be how fast McLaughlin-Levrone has run or how high they’ve jumped, but how so many have changed minds.
“This generation of track and field is on a different level,” McLaughlin-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 was joined in defying the impossible by Kipyegon, Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Manuchick, 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 July 7, Manuchick and Kipyegon set world records within minutes of each other: the Ukrainian soaring 6 feet, 10 3/4 inches to break the global mark set by Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova 37 years ago, Kipyegon lowering her own 1,500-meter record to 3:49.04. One year earlier, Kipyegon had knocked nearly five seconds off the mile world record by running 4:07.64.
“Absolutely amazing,” said Great Britain’s Laura Muir, the Olympic 1,500 silver medalist in Tokyo, said of her Kenyan rival. “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,” Kipyegon 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, at 3:53.37, ran more than a second faster 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.
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No one, however, has done more to raise the sport’s standards than McLaughlin-Levrone.
These have been the Sydney Olympics.
On 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 with a top standard of 52.35 from August 2003 to July 2019, McLaughlin-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.
On Saturday, she split 47.70 on the relay
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