Sawt Falasteen - McLaughlin-Levrone powers to 400m world gold in second fastest time ever

The 26-year-old American clocked 47.78sec on a rain-slicked Tokyo track to smash the previous championship record of 47.99sec set by Jarmila Kratochvilova of then-Czechoslovakia in 1983.

Defending champion and Olympic gold medallist Marileidy Paulino took silver in a Dominican Republic record of 47.98sec -- the third fastest of all time. Bahrain's Salwa Eid Naser claimed bronze in 48.19sec.

Having smashed the US record in the semi-final, McLaughlin-Levrone looked set to unleash something big in the final, perhaps even threatening Marita Koch's 40-year-old world record of 47.60sec.

And so it proved, the two-time 400m hurdles Olympic champion and world record holder laying it all down on the track.

McLaughlin-Levrone was drawn in lane five, outside Cuba's Roxana Gomez and inside Britain's world indoor champion Amber Anning.

Temperatures at the National Stadium had dipped from recent sultry conditions as steady rain fell.

But the wet track made no difference as McLaughlin-Levrone motored out of her blocks.

By the halfway mark she had already gone past Anning and she ran a fine curve to put herself ahead in the home straight.

Paulino briefly looked like she might threaten from the outside lane, but McLaughlin-Levrone, with her eyes glued on the clock, used every sinew in her body to propel herself over the line.

She crossed it in a championship record, but fell agonisingly short of the record set by Koch of then-East Germany in Canberra on October 6, 1985.

The golden girl of US track and field was left gasping for oxygen and seemingly shell-shocked.

She enjoyed a brief moment's respite sat on a chair, with a bottle of water, tucked away from the public eye.

But then she returned to the track, to rapturous applause, to soak up the plaudits, don an American flag and search out her husband Andre in the stands for a kiss.

McLaughlin-Levrone's presence in the 400m, as opposed to the 400m hurdles, has certainly revived an event that has lacked spark in recent years.

And her victory will go a long way to silencing those detractors who questioned her decision to step away from the 400m hurdles, an event in which she went unbeaten for six seasons, to focus on the flat race.

McLaughlin-Levrone was one of the stars when Tokyo hosted the Covid-delayed Olympic Games in 2021.

She set a world record of 51.46sec when winning 400m hurdles gold in one of the stand-out performances of those Games.

She backed that up with a second gold at last year's Paris Olympics, again thrilling in the hurdles with another world record of 50.37sec, her sixth in the event.

McLaughline-Levrone was also part of the US 4x400m relay squad that took Olympic golds in Tokyo and Paris, as well as world golds in Doha in 2019 and Eugene.

K.AbuTaha--SF-PST