Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone: Inside the mind of a serial winner

New York Times

29-05-2025

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is discussing what the night before a race at the Olympic Games is like.
'It's very broken-up sleep,' she says, smiling. 'For very big races, it's almost like (my body) is a race car revving up. It's just ready. Ready to get to it.'
And when McLaughlin-Levrone gets to it, that tends to be devastating news for her opponents. Still only 25, she has won four Olympic golds: two over 400m hurdles in Paris and Tokyo and two more in the 4x400m relay.
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But track has not always been this straightforward for her. Over an absorbing half-hour on a video call with The Athletic, she provides a window into the mind of one of the planet's outstanding modern athletes. She explains how faith helped her overcome the anxiety that previously left her 'throwing up' before major races, as well as her fears that her value was wrapped up solely in winning and losing races.
Three years out from a home Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, she has emerged as the most dominant U.S. female track athlete. Among the men's and women's track medallists who won gold for the United States in Paris, only Sha'Carri Richardson has more than her 1.5m followers on Instagram. McLaughlin-Levrone has won 12 consecutive 400m hurdles finals in the past six years — she was last defeated at the World Championships in 2019.
In that time, she has also broken the world record in the 400m hurdles six times. Between 1984 and 2019, the world record in the event was lowered by 1.42 seconds. But between the summers of 2021 and 2024, McLaughlin-Levrone trimmed 1.79 seconds off it — all by herself. By winning the 400m hurdles in Paris last summer, she became the first American to retain an Olympic gold in an individual track event since Michael Johnson's consecutive golds in the 400m in 1996 and 2000.
There is competition, most notably from her compatriot Anna Cockrell and the Dutch racer Femke Bol. But in Paris, McLaughlin-Levrone obliterated the field. Bol took bronze, and she was two seconds behind.
Is motivation a challenge? Does it ever feel like she is racing against herself?
'There's always something I can be doing better,' McLaughlin-Levrone says. 'There's always someone striving to be where you are. There's days where I'm more motivated than others. It's easy to get stuck in a rut or it can become monotonous, but I get to do what I love every day and I get to quite literally race a clock.
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'It's fun to figure out how I can become the best athlete I can be and keep lowering my times. There's always the reality of competition that's going to push me. But when I am at practice, it is figuring out how I can be better than Sydney was yesterday.'
But how much 'better' can Sydney be? When she qualified to represent the United States in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 as a 16-year-old high-school student, she was the youngest to make the team in 36 years. Might she break Carl Lewis's U.S. record of nine American Olympic golds? Could she break the 50-second barrier for the 400m hurdles, having set a time of 50.37 seconds in Paris? Might she switch up events in 2028, having solely competed in the 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay in Paris?
At the NYC Grand Prix in 2024, she won the 400m flat in 48.75 seconds, which would have secured a bronze medal in Paris. Over the 200m flat in Los Angeles last year — her first time competing over the distance since 2018 — she ran a time of 22.07, which would have earned her silver in Paris. All of which makes one wonder what might be possible if she committed to different events in 2028.
This weekend, racing in Michael Johnson's Grand Slam Track in Philadelphia, McLaughlin-Levrone will run her first 100m flat in a professional setting, and will also contest the 100m hurdles.
She was one of the first to sign up to Grand Slam Track. While attendance was underwhelming at the first meet in Kingston, Jamaica, and McLaughlin-Levrone says there are 'wrinkles' to iron out, she insists GST 'is something that can grow.'
'All the athletes I've talked to have really enjoyed it,' she adds.
The event, in which racers compete in two disciplines at each meet, enables her to dabble in different events. And she says she is open to running on the flat in 2028.
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'I'm starting to kind of like this sprinting thing,' she says, with a glint in her eye. She likes the buzz of feeling uncomfortable. She says it is 'humbling', describing the short sprints as akin to 'entering a lion's den.'
'It's a completely different energy system. It's so ballistic; shooting out of the blocks, toe dragging. To create this force in a linear line down the track is so different than the grace that the 400m gives if you don't have the best block start. That doesn't exist in the 100m.
'It's definitely been a shift these past few weeks, but it's been great to work on sprint mechanics, block start and hurdle technique, because those are all things — even though they aren't as important in longer races — which can still be of benefit down the line.'
She has been studying videos of short sprinters, tapping up Trayvon Bromell, the U.S. sprinter who has twice won world bronze, for advice. Bromell is a friend of her husband, the former NFL wide receiver Andre Levrone Jr.
'He was giving me a few pointers of how to set up in the blocks,' she says. 'I've watched a lot his starts, specifically, just trying to understand some of the shin angles. It is fascinating getting to learn something that I didn't know before.'
McLaughlin-Levrone's track journey began in Dunellen, New Jersey. Both of her parents were strong runners and her dad Willie, her coach growing up, made it to the semi-finals of the 1984 U.S. Olympic trials in the 400m.
'My dad took me and my three siblings and we were our own little track team,' she says. 'There was no pressure. That is how we were introduced into the sport.
'I didn't do any club. We didn't really even train. My dad gave us some drills for our arm swing, our high knees, agility drills and then it was just, 'Go run'. He wanted us to be kids. He didn't want to train us like pros.'
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In her early teens, she even paused from competitive running altogether, instead focusing on soccer (she was a right-winger), basketball and dance. Might she have made a career out of soccer? 'I think so,' she nods. 'If I had stuck with it. I loved it — not quite as much as track — but it was up there.'
Track took over, as McLaughlin-Levrone won an under-18 World Championship at the age of 15 and then debuted in the Olympics at 16. When did she realize she might, to put it mildly, be onto something?
'In freshman year of high school, my first race was an indoors 300m. I broke the state record. I was like, 'OK, I think there's hope for you!'
'My parents used to say, 'You're special,' but I feel like parents are supposed to say that. But for me to see that come to fruition at 14, racing against some seniors, I was like, 'Wow, if I really train for this, I do think there's a future here.''
The exposure of the Olympics at just 16 brought rewards and pitfalls. She signed a six-year deal with New Balance. Agents and brands were quickly sniffing around. Her parents, she says, 'did a wonderful job of being that fence between me and all the other things.' Still, she acknowledges that returning to high school as an Olympian left her 'with a bit of a big head.'
Expectations created pressure, and the path to the top had troughs as well as peaks, such as a stutter on the eighth hurdle at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, where she finished third.
'I lived a lot of my life in fear,' she says. 'Fear of not pleasing the Lord, fear of not being loved by people, and I think that's why I gravitated so strongly towards track and field. I felt, if I was winning, I was being validated and people would like me and love me. But, obviously, you're not going to win every single race, you're not always going to have your best days. And so to put my trust, my hope and my identity in something that was changing was obviously never going to give me a firm foundation.
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'I used to get so anxious and so nervous that I would just be throwing up. I would be a mess, honestly.
'For me, winning was the only option and it caused things inside that I didn't know how to handle or deal with.'
How did she deal with losing? 'Not very well. A lot of it felt like I wasn't valuable anymore. I felt like people didn't view me the same way, or I wasn't as special or whatever. And so it took quite a hit to my confidence, my view of myself.
'I would definitely would say I drew back. I was very closed off and didn't really talk. It was all in my head.'
She says that during the pandemic, she felt 'the Lord tugging' on her heart. She had grown up in the church, but says she previously had an incomplete view of her faith, and that the gospel now gives her greater security. She's writing a book about what she describes as her journey from fear to faith, and her husband Andre is also training to become a pastor.
'Whether that's reading before races, listening to worship music or even praying before workouts, it brings peace,' she says. She still experiences nerves, and the restless nights, but she takes comfort in believing that 'it is already written, whatever's going to take place.'
Her family, too, remain a key support. 'My dad always says, 'Be the butterfly, just go and do what you do.' After the race in Paris, my eldest brother said, 'I almost threw up watching you, that was stressful.''
'It was a huge moment for our family to go from being our own little track team at AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) events to the Paris Olympics.'
In Los Angeles in 2028, that pride will only increase. 'For the Olympics and for track to have been so strong back in the '80s and the '90s, it kind of fell off a little bit in the States with all the amazing sports that we have and the leagues that have just grown. For U.S. track athletes, L.A. 28 is a huge moment. It is just so special to have it here on home soil and to bring it back.'
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton/The Athletic;)