Athletics, McLaughlin phenomenon Here is grace beyond the obstacle

At the World Championships he runs the 400 in 50 ”68 and also breaks his record

the character

Giulia Zonca

SENT TO EUGENE

If Sydney McLaughlin stopped racing today, at 22, as a world champion, Olympic champion and 400 hurdles record holder, the specialty would still remain her property for who knows how long and athletics would be beautiful with her name. She, at the Eugene World Cup, not only established a record, she blew it up and now she is ready to move on to something else.

“Go Sydney”, as per the support group and nickname that tries to keep up with his speed, ran the 400 hs in 50 “68, changed the characteristics of the specialty because this is the fourth retouch he makes at the best time ever in just 13 months. In total you have lowered the clock by 1 ”49, by 73 cents just with the last tear. It means eliminating the competition, Bob Beamon explained it well, who in 1968 removed the long jump from the deck taking it 55 cm beyond the competition. It took 23 years to get back to a race of that level and it was also unique. Just as it is difficult to think of being able to approach Bolt’s 9 ”58 on 100 meters, a flash that perhaps only he has in his legs. Long-term effects that push McLaughlin to a variation on the theme.

She could continue to improve, she herself said “this is still not the perfect race”. Hard to believe, in the fourth obstacle she sowed the others and then she transformed. Behind she certainly had no anonymous rivals, Muhammad, also American, bronze in 53 “13, is the woman to whom McLaughlin took all the titles and all the numbers, the one who preceded her in the standings and who is still there, with great honor to fight against a phenomenon knowing that he has no chance: «A 400 hs under 50? Sydney can. ‘ Bol, Dutch, silver in 52 ”27, is 22 too and it is a pleasure to see her racing. Except that McLaughlin is something else, it’s Mars. Another planet inhabited only by her.

Giving a historical sense to women’s records is important, they must be reconstructed, rooted in the contemporary world made up of doping controls and biological passports because the majority have resisted from a past era in which, especially women, were pushed far beyond the lawful. Only the obstacles have been updated, the chronometers from 100 to 800 remain anchored to the Eighties. Even between jumps and throws, long, high, shot put and discus remain anchored to that period so the cosmic accelerations like “Go Sydney” have an extra value. They return a perspective. She is determined to move on to a new adventure. She will do it with her coach Bob Kersee, one of the reference points for athletics and also husband and coach of Florence Griffith, the person who more than anyone else embodies that period full of doubts. The degrees of separation between the damage to be repaired and the athlete aiming to do so are far less than six.

McLaughlin still doesn’t know the project. Go to the 400 floors, where she would have been seventh in the World Final, with the time used to overcome 10 obstacles, and face the wall left by Marita Koch (1985), have fun on the 100 hs or combine the lap of the track with the 400 obstacles , in an Olympics, two goals never succeeded. Whatever evidence she points at her, she will do it with the intention of detonating her. –

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