She looked almost lonely out there in the final stretch, gliding effortlessly over the last couple of hurdles and through the tape nearly 10 metres clear of her closest rivals, a woman apart. The word that comes to mind watching Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400m hurdles is unbothered, existing in a realm beyond the roars of 68,000 spectators in full throat and the seven challengers in her distant wake, an embodiment of poise and technique and endurance and steely concentration. She doesn’t even look like she’s running that fast.
The 100th medal for the United States at these Paris Olympics may have been simultaneously the most and least riveting of them all. The pride of New Brunswick, who is so plainly touched by the divine unlike any New Jersey native since Whitney Houston, delivered an Olympic performance of breathtaking sublimity on Thursday night, reducing a final that was billed as a blockbuster showdown with Femke Bol of the Netherlands into Secretariat at Belmont. Seeing McLaughlin-Levrone make up the stagger down the backstretch before breaking free from the generational Dutch star over the last curve and leaning through the line a yawning 1.50sec ahead of US teammate Anna Cockrell only reaffirmed what everyone deep down already knew going in: her only competition is herself.
