McLaughlin-Levrone runs 48.90 to capture second 400-meter national title
McLaughlin-Levrone, a four-time Olympic gold medalist and the world record holder in the 400 hurdles, has been focusing on the flat race this season. She beat Isabella Whittaker by .31 seconds to improve to 6-0 lifetime in 400-meter finals.
McLaughlin-Levrone also won the national title in 2023, but missed worlds due to injury.
This marked the 25-year-old's third time cracking the 49-second mark in the 400. It was her best time of the season, though she came up short of both her personal best (48.74) and the American record (48.70) set by Sanya Richards-Ross in 2006.
That record figures to be in jeopardy in Tokyo in September on the same track where McLaughlin-Levrone won her first Olympic hurdles title four years ago.
But she is no sure thing to win. Two runners — 2019 world champion Salwa Eid Naser and defending world and Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino — have run faster this year than McLaughlin-Levrone did in Saturday's final at Hayward Field.
'It just takes reps,' McLaughlin-Levrone said. 'I'm grateful for this opportunity, grateful to be on the team, grateful to be healthy, grateful to God that I'm here.'
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Diana Taurasi gets ‘raw' about Olympic benching
The post Diana Taurasi gets 'raw' about Olympic benching appeared first on ClutchPoints. For WNBA legend Diana Taurasi, the upcoming Prime Video docuseries 'Taurasi' is a catharsis. She can shed light on the ins and outs of her historic career. One of which will be coming to terms with being benched during the Paris Olympics, per Josh Weinfuss of ESPN. After Taurasi was selected to join the team, there were accusations that Caitlin Clark was snubbed. However, Taurasi didn't see it as such. 'To be honest, I never even really thought about it. I always felt like I deserved to be on the team because it was my team for 20 years and I know how to get the job done' Taurasi said. Overall, Taurasi played 55 minutes in the first five games in Paris. However, she didn't play in the gold medal game against France. The U.S. defeated France 67-66 in a tightly contested battle. Ultimately, Taurasi came away with her 6th Olympic gold medal. However, she kept looking at teammate Sue Bird during the game with a sense of confusion about coach Cheryl Reeve not putting her in the game. 'This was the game she was actually brought here for,' Bird said. 'I'm confused by what happened,' Taurasi said. 'I never got, 'Hey, you're not going to play because we're going this direction.' Sounds good, I can live with that. But I didn't get that. Maybe it was just my time to get the raw end of the stick.' In essence, Taurasi didn't feel this gold medal matched up with her five others. 'I've done this five other times where I felt like I really earned it,' she said. 'This one was the one that doesn't belong.' The Olympic pedigree of Diana Taurasi In the annals of history, Taurasi has the most basketball gold medals in Olympic history. She first joined the U.S. team during the 2004 games in Athens. From there, she played in Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris. Each time, the U.S. women's basketball won and continued one of the greatest runs in sports history. Related: Geno Auriemma reveals 'unfortunate' thing about Diana Taurasi's Mercury career Related: 18-year-old arrested at Mercury game after jumping on viral sex toy 'trend'
Indianapolis Star
3 hours ago
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Why is Team Penske considering replacing Will Power when he's been its best driver this year?
Show Caption Since 2022, Will Power has more points, podiums and top-5s than either of his Team Penske teammates. The 44-year-old Power has just three races left on his current deal with Team Penske in his 17th season with the team. PORTLAND – As the IndyCar paddock waits – team owners with open seats and free agent drivers – speculation on Will Power's future swirls quicker by the day. Will Team Penske, the winningest team in IndyCar, cast aside, fail to come to terms with or simply be unable to provide a seat for the driver who has stood on the top step more times in Victory Lane for Roger Penske in American open-wheel racing than any other? The same driver who leads the team in points this season and has racked up more points, podiums and top-5s the last four years combined? That Silly Season decision will either send much of the rest of the paddock into motion, or keep what otherwise feels like a paddock nearly full of content teams and drivers standing pat for this coming offseason as they enter a 2026 campaign expected to be ripe with driver movement. At the center of it all sits a 44-year-old Will Power – 45 on day of next year's season-opener – who's spent 17 seasons with seven different teammates at Team Penske and finds himself in a contract year during the program's worst season in more than a quarter-century. Zero wins. Five podiums. 14 DNFs, all spread across 42 starts in 2025 for the Team Penske IndyCar trio. At IndyCar's most recent stop at Laguna Seca, all three cars managed to take the checkered flag for just the third time in the last two months (nine races in all). And Power finds himself having the least-bad string of bad days and the most decent-to-solid ones among his teammates, presently sitting 9 th in points with Scott McLaughlin 12 th and Josef Newgarden 15 th. But Newgarden and McLaughlin, 12 and nine years Power's junior, respectively, inked new multi-year contract extensions within the last 14 months, and so it's Power, despite outperforming both of them this year and across the four-year stretch since McLaughlin's second full-time campaign, who finds himself potentially on the chopping block. 'Can you believe the year I'm having, in a contract year? Two engine failures in two race weekends. Just one of those things. Not bad luck. It just happens at times,' Power remarked at Toronto, reflecting on a pair of race weekends that saw him sandwich a podium in Race 1 at Iowa in between a pair of DNFs at Mid-Ohio and Iowa's second race of the weekend. At that point, he'd suffered three DNFs over his last five starts – all thanks to mechanical failures not of his own doing. 'Can only smile about it because I've been in the sport a long time,' he continued. 'I just know these sort of things come round. It's very typical of life that a bad year would play out when you're trying to get a contract. 'Yeah, man, but I love it here. I do. I really hope I'm back next year.' Words both spoken and delivered like a man exasperated by his results, frustrated feeling as if they could somehow impact him when they're largely not reflective of his own performance and walking on eggshells, very much uncertain of whether this may be his last shot racing with a championship-caliber organization in IndyCar. Privately, he's made remarks this summer to those around him feeling as if 'they want to get rid of me.' Why Will Power has been Team Penske's most consistent driver since 2022 So why would they? From a pure results standpoint, there's just not any reason that holds water. A quick look at Power's 2025 campaign shows this: >> A run of four consecutive top-7 finishes (and seven overall), including two podiums >> Three mechanical failures in the span of five races – including one after starting on pole at World Wide Technology Raceway >> An Indy 500 all but destroyed by the team breaking a rule that left him starting last instead of inside the top-12 >> Two very blah days outside the top-10 (on days where no one at Team Penske had any speed to speak of either) >> A season-opening multi-car crash triggered by Power himself Seven times, Power has been the team's highest-finishing driver across 14 races where he has more top-10s (seven versus six (McLaughlin) and five (Newgarden), more top-5s (five versus four for McLaughlin and two for Newgarden) and as many podiums as any of his teammates (two versus two for Newgarden and one for McLaughlin). Dating back to the start of Power's title-winning 2022 campaign, Team Penske's most veteran pilot has a chokehold on the bulk of the driver vs. driver statistics with his teammates, including points (1,772 – 10 more than Newgarden, 116 beyond McLaughlin), podiums (22 – two more than McLaughlin, three more than Newgarden) and top-5s (30 – two more than McLaughlin, five more than Newgarden). Though Power trails his teammates in wins over that span (four vs. 11 from Newgarden and seven from McLaughlin), his consistency clearly has and continues to out-weigh his teammates' propensity for a few more top-level Sundays. During that stretch, he won the team's most recent IndyCar title (2022), shouldered immense stress and turmoil off-track in 2023 as his wife, Liz, fought for her life and then should've finished tops on the team in points after sitting second only to Alex Palou for a large chunk of the closing stretch of the 2024 campaign, only for faulty seatbelts in the season-finale drop him from 2 nd to 4 th in the championship standings. David Malukas seems set as Power's heir apparent Waiting is a newly-minted Indianapolis 500 runner-up who's nearly half Power's age, has shown flashes of serious promise and speed, and who has some sort of entanglement with Team Penske for the future, whether formal and official or otherwise. AJ Foyt Racing's David Malukas sits just 13 points back of Power entering this weekend's race at Portland. The up-and-coming star sports a baby-blue Gallagher livery typically seen on the No. 3 of McLaughlin that serves as much of a reminder as any of just how close the 23-year-old sees to be to formally joining Team Penske. He races for a team that shares a technical alliance with the Penske program and has his full-season entry seemingly funded by Penske-aligned sponsors. In any other year, his proximity to Power would suggest a changing of the guard in the No. 12 was not only imminent, but necessary. But when you take a step back and consider the pair's present situations and their trajectories over the last couple years, a change heading into 2026 would seem mighty hasty. For one, Malukas has spent the last two years inside four different organizations – two years at Dale Coyne Racing, moonlighting at Arrow McLaren for just over half a calendar year without any race starts as an offseason mountain biking injury first sidelined him and then led to his dismissal. He'd find a lifeline at Meyer Shank Racing at last season's halfway point and ride a rollercoaster to the end of the year before signing with Foyt. In short, one of the youngest drivers in the paddock has known very little consistency and his results through 58 starts – 15 top-10s, five top-5s and three podiums – point to a driver who has potential but still needs a year or so for it to begin to fully form. In fact, if you consider Malukas is in Year 3.5 of his IndyCar career (having missed half of what should've been Year 3), his progression tracks rather similarly to a young Josef Newgarden, who spent five seasons within the programs of Sarah Fisher and Ed Carpenter and in that time transformed from a back-marker of a rookie to a 4 th -place championship finisher by Year 5. Malukas is just 28 points ahead of his Foyt teammate Santino Ferrucci (who missed Toronto after a gnarly race day morning warmup crash) and hasn't nearly reached the run of consistency that Ferrucci laid down a year ago, with 11 top-10s and two top-5s in 17 starts, culminating in a 9 th -place points finish as the top non-Big-4 driver in the championship, and there's reason to wonder if Malukas is quite ready to take that next step in 2026. Twice this decade, Team Penske has been forced to make tough decisions on an accomplished veteran, but in both instances – Juan Pablo Montoya in 2016 and Helio Castroneves in 2017 – there was more than just a rising star or a need to drop back down a car that seemed to warrant such a move. They were lagging behind their teammates, too, with Montoya (41 years old at the time) finishing 8 th in points behind the rest of Team Penske that went 1-2-3 in 2016, and with Castroneves (42 at the time) taking 4 th in 2017 as Newgarden and Simon Pagenaud battled down to the wire in a 1-2 points finish and Power won three times with seven podiums in 5 th. As far as the organization has faltered, from a results standpoint, in 2025, Power remains the class of his team and in his lowest of lows remains a smidge ahead of the driver said to be in line to take his place. Roger Penske faces a decision: Will Power or David Malukas? Where this story ultimately end is likely to depend on the contents of the very private conversations and negotiations taking place behind closed doors between Penske, Power, his manager, ex-driver Oriol Servia; Penske Corp. president Bud Denker and new Team Penske IndyCar and sportscars president Jonathan Diuguid. Is Power willing to accept a one-year deal to remain in his seat? If so, that would seem like the best result best for all parties, allowing the Team Penske legend an opportunity to return to the form of years' past, while giving the program some much-needed consistency and stability, and Malukas another season to inch closer to his potential. After all, outside McLaughlin's rookie campaign in 2021 after three consecutive Super Cars titles, Team Penske has rarely served as a training ground for IndyCar talent. But a two-year deal for Power – or more generally-speaking the opportunity to go out on his own terms at a team he's driven 17 seasons for and where he's delivered two titles, one Indy 500 win and more IndyCar wins than any Penske driver before him – would either put Team Penske at risk of losing Malukas or be wholly incompatible with whatever deal they struck with the young driver. Eventually, Power's time in the series will end, but it was here a year ago in the wake of his dominant Portland victory where the Team Penske driver staunchly refuted the idea he was considering retiring. Earlier this year, he said he felt as if he had five more seasons in him and could run full-time right up close to the start of his 50s at or near his present performance level. The 44-year-old is likely to finish tops in the organization in points yet again. Can a team whose top priority this offseason should be regaining its speed, reliability and consistency afford to lose that in one of the IndyCar team's longest-tenured current employees while in the midst of a managerial and engineering transformation? That's why they call him 'The Captain.' Share your feedback to help improve our site!
San Francisco Chronicle
7 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Pete Carroll, Geno Smith return to Seattle with Raiders
SEATTLE (AP) — Pete Carroll played a new role in familiar territory Thursday night, with his first preseason game as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders coming against the Seattle Seahawks. The former Seattle coach clearly felt at home before the game, talking with many Seahawks players on the field during warmups and generally being his outgoing, energetic self. Carroll spent 14 seasons in Seattle, going 137-89-1 and putting together double-digit victories eight times over a nine-year stretch. He was at the helm for some of the most memorable moments in team history, including the 2013 Super Bowl championship with the dominant 'Legion of Boom' defense, before the Seahawks parted ways with him after the 2023 season. Las Vegas starting quarterback Geno Smith also made a return to Seattle. Smith revitalized his career with the Seahawks, signing in 2019 as the backup and then becoming the starter in 2022. He was selected AP Comeback Player of the Year when he led the league with a 69.8% completion percentage and threw for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns. Smith started, but only played one series. He completed one of three passes for 15 yards.
