“It’s so unusual. Imagine sitting down and trying to write with your other hand. You may have a desire to do it. But your brain may not let it happen.” Track legends put Sydney McLaughlin’s journey to her breathtaking performance into perspective
In 30 days, McLaughlin had dropped her world record time by an unheard of,.73 seconds. Until 2019, no woman hurdler had run faster than 52.34. In the three years since, two Americans—McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad—have topped that mark six times. But never before like Friday. Never before likeEveryone else could try and process what they had just seen. Good luck with that. On NBC, retired sprinter turned commentator Ato Boldon called it the most incredible track performance he’d ever seen.
Even then, marked for world domination before she could legally drink, McLaughlin and her circle knew one cold and unassailable truth. Phenoms fail all the time, for a variety of reasons. They get injured, warped by celebrity, or distracted; a better phenom comes along, ensuring they break world records while finishing in second place; they try another event, or shift to another sport. The work, in other words, wasn’t close to done.
He wanted to remove the psychological pressure by focusing on the science, his steps and his timing, the same process McLaughlin embarked on in 2020. “Crazy people run this race,” Moses says, citing the combination of pure speed, different movements and strategy. “Why would anyone want to do that time and time again?”
Sometimes, when Kersee returned home after training sessions, his wife saw his mind spinning, as if in perpetual overdrive. He knew what he had in McLaughlin, sensing greatness beyond even gold medals. He didn’t share technical details with his wife, and Al’s sister, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, but as one of the greatest-ever women athletes, she understood McLaughlin’s ceiling: becoming the face of U.S. track and field.
So here they were, Kersee and McLaughlin, the coach and the prodigy no more, back in Eugene, back at Hayward Field, back in the same race, against the same rival, Muhammad. But everything was different, and it seemed like everyone who knew could tell.
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