“Ah come on, steady. Can we not just celebrate this Olympics? I’m not chatting about the next one. Sport’s a classic for this.”
The words there of Duncan Scott, one of the star’s of Britain’s swim team, when asked last week within minutes of the end of his third Games whether there might be a fourth.
You doubt he is alone in being frustrated by the speed at which the wheel turns and the narrative moves on. But when Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone does what she did last night, how can you help but ask: what now?
For the second Olympics in a row, the American broke her own 400m hurdles world record to win gold, a time of 50.37seconds rated by World Athletics’s complex points system as the greatest female track performance of all-time.
On a night when Noah Lyles’s bid to emulate Usain Bolt’s Beijing, London and Rio sprint doubles fell flat, here was a timely reminder that it is his quieter team-mate who, in pure talent terms, is the closest athletics has seen to the Jamaican great.
The algorithm, incidentally, still has Bolt’s records out ahead: McLaughlin-Levrone’s run last night was worth 1,322 of World Athletics’s performance points, compared to 1356 (100m) and 1352 (200m) for Bolt’s best. But, thankfully, McLaughlin-Levrone’s greatness will not be measured by spreadsheet when her career ends. Given she turned 25 only on Wednesday, there is still plenty of it left.
"This is IMMENSE!" 😍
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 8, 2024
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won the women's 400m hurdles with a new world record! 🙌#BBCOlympics #Olympics #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/lpuUFtUUBT
The challenge closest to home from here would be to break the 50-second barrier in her specialist event, a ludicrous thought since Anna Cockrell became only the fourth woman to break 52 when claiming silver last night.
McLaughlin-Levrone’s coach, Bobby Kersee, though, thinks she can do it, and so seemingly does she.
“I was hoping it’d be a little faster, but I’m sure there are some things in the middle there we can clean up,” the Texan said last night. "There’s always more work to do.”
Her event could yet get harder. Lord Sebastian Coe, the chief of World Athletics, has been talking about raising the height of the hurdles, which are currently six inches lower than in the men’s race. That might slow McLaughlin-Levrone down, but it might also exacerbate the gap between her and the rest.
So, what about further afield?
McLaughlin-Levrone’s time last night would have been ninth among the flat 400m semi-finalists on Wednesday. Last year, she took a break from hurdles to put genuine focus on that event, running 48.74sec at US Trials, within a whisker of the American record. She was due to run the flat lap at the World Championships in Budapest, and would have gone in as favourite, but pulled out with a knee injury, before reverting to her “first love” in Olympic year.
Next year’s World Championships in Tokyo offer another window for experiment; Marita Koch’s world-record 47.60, set in 1985, another long-range target to shoot at.
Could she run both? The workload would be heavy and, unlike Bol, McLaughlin-Levrone thrives on racing only sparsely. The rounds over hurdles in particular, though, would be a doddle, and such is her status now that if she wants to double-up, organisers would surely do all they could to make the schedule work. Sure, fatigue might be the difference between breaking the world record again or not come the final. But it would be worth it to leave with two individual golds.
It has even been whispered that she could take on the 800m, where another ancient world record will soon come under threat, perhaps by Keely Hodgkinson. That is a very different event, but on the question of whether McLaughlin-Levrone has the capacity, Kersee ought to be to be a good judge, having coached Athing Mu to Tokyo’s gold.
Watching the now double Olympic champion charge off the final hurdle last night, you got the feeling she could do whatever she wants.
