Cheer on two local favorites in Track & Field representing Team USA at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan this summer. Dalilah Muhammad, from Jamaica, Queens and Sydney McLaughlin, from Dunellen, New Jersey.
Excerpt from NY Post by Brian Lewis. July 20
From the last Olympics to now, Sydney McLaughlin has grown from phenom to GOAT, from a precocious 16-year-old New Jersey schoolgirl who ran her way onto Team USA to the fastest 400-meter hurdler in history now looking for Tokyo gold.
McLaughlin will be one of the faces of not just Team USA but these entire Olympic Games. And the world record 51.90-second performance she blistered through at last month’s U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials — beating not just reigning gold medalist Dalilah Muhammad, but the New Yorker’s former world record as well — stamped her as the favorite in the Tokyo final.
“Iron sharpens iron,” McLaughlin said. “People can call it whatever they want to: It’s two great athletes pushing each other to be better. There’s no animosity, there’s no hard feelings; there’s just two people trying to be their best. We wouldn’t be able to have these world records go back and forth without one another.”
This back-and-forth has seen the two locals post the four fastest times in history. Any time they step on the track together, the world record is in jeopardy, and fans are in for a show. The Tokyo Olympics should be the headline event.
