Sydney McLaughlin followed her astonishing world record by taking the final victorious lap of the World Athletics Championships on Sunday, pulling away in the 4x400-metre relay to close a US runaway and give the Americans their record 33rd medal of the meet.
McLaughlin turned a 0.73-second lead into a 2.93-second laugher on the anchor lap, adding this burst of speed to the world record she set two nights earlier in the 400 hurdles and guiding her team to a winning time of three minutes, 17.79 seconds.
Two more world records were broken on the day – in the first and last action of the last session at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan opened the evening by setting the record for the 100m hurdles in the semifinals with a time of 12.12 seconds. She came back about 90 minutes later to win the gold medal. Her winning time was actually faster — 12.06 — but the wind was too strong, so that mark doesn’t go in the books.
“When I watched the record, I was like ‘Whoa, who did that?‘” Amusan said.
And after McLaughlin was done with her last lap, pole vaulter Armand Duplantis of Sweden cleared 6.21m (20 feet, 4 1/2 inches) to best his world record by 0.01 to earn Sweden's first gold medal of the meet. That was 12 fewer than the Americans.
The last was especially sweet, as it also marked the 14th and final world gold for 36-year-old Allyson Felix, who came out of retirement to run in the preliminary of the 4x400m and, so, gets a medal. She finishes her career with a record 20 world medals, overall.
“We’re a family, we stick together,” McLaughlin said. “Allyson came out of retirement to get us here, so we wanted to do this.”
The 33 medals was three more than the US collected in 2017, and one of those golds went to Athing Mu in the 800m.
She busted through the two laps in 1:56.30 — a 0.08 margin over Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson. The 20-year-old Mu is now the Olympic and world champion at that distance and, along with McLaughlin, part of a bright future for the United States.
In between, Champion Allison anchored the men’s 4x400m relay to an easy win for medal No 32.
Another medal went to US pole vaulter Christopher Nilsen, who cleared 5.94 meters (19 feet, 5 3/4 inches), to clinch silver, then stepped aside to see what Duplantis would do.
The Olympic champion known as “Mondo” missed on his first attempt at the record, and after waiting for the relay, got the crowd clapping in rhythm for him and cleared the bar.
The decathlon champion is Kevin Mayer of France, who adds this to his title in 2017, while the 5,000m title went to Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, who finished in 13:09.24 in a special race.
That was the last race the legendary Steve Prefontaine of Oregon ran before a fatal car accident in Eugene.
It’s a city brimming with tributes to “Pre,” and in many ways, track’s biggest event, the World Championships, ended up in this college town of 170,000 because of the tracks he laid down a half-century ago.
“This is probably the best place I could have won it,” Ingebrigtsen said.
