Anna Cockrell

The seventh of track and field action at the Paris Olympics was monumental in so many ways, and another stellar day for Team USA! Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone broke the world record en route to Olympic gold in the women's 400m hurdles and Tara Davis-Woodhall claimed gold in the long jump. In tonight's edition of Torch Talk, the team breaks down...

– Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won her second Olympic gold in the women's 400mH and broke the world record for the sixth time, running 50.37. She is the first woman to ever win back-to-back Olympic golds in this event. Anna Cockrell set a huge PB to upset Femke Bol for silver. Bol settled for bronze in 52.15.

– Letsile Tebogo upset Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek to win gold in the men's 200m, running an African record of 19.46. It's the first time the 200m Olympic crown has ever been won by an African man. Bednarek won silver for the second Games in a row and Lyles took home bronze. After the race, Lyles revealed he had tested positive for COVID earlier in the week.

– Grant Holloway finally got an Olympic gold to go with his three world titles. He won in 12.99, his 5th time under 13 seconds this year. Daniel Roberts beat out Rasheed Broadbell by .003 seconds to win silver, making it another 1-2 for the U.S.

– Tara Davis-Woodhall won the women's long jump competition with a best mark of 7.10m, her first global title outdoors. Malaika Mihambo, the defending champion, finished in silver and Jasmine Moore won bronze. After her triple jump bronze earlier in the meet, Moore becomes only the 2nd woman in history to medal in both horizontal jumps in the same Olympics.

– Arshad Nadeem won the men's javelin competition in 92.97m, recording the 2 best throws in Olympic history in the process. It's the first track and field medal ever won by a Pakistani athlete.

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HOSTS:

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Katelyn Hutchison | @_kxnaomi on Instagram

We’re excited to have a full CITIUS MAG team on the ground in Paris providing daily live shows before and after the action, including interviews with competing athletes, our TORCH TALK recap show, and the return of GOOD MORNING TRACK AND FIELD.

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Last one, fast one?!

The final day of the Olympic Trials was one for the history books. In every. single. event. that took place on the tracks yesterday afternoon, the Olympic Trials meet record was broken. In multiple events, simply qualifying for Team USA meant you had to produce a performance that ranked in the U.S. top-10 of all time.

12.37 in the 100m hurdles, 3:56.75 in the women’s 1500m, and 1:44.12 in the men’s 800m were only good enough for fourth place. The mantra of “iron sharpens iron” normally applies to training groups, but it certainly also applies to American track and field right now. When being top 10 in the world is not a guarantee of being top 3 in the U.S., the choice is simple: you elevate your game or you go home.

The afternoon began with the 5000m final, where last year’s U.S. champ Abdi Nur and this year’s 10,000m champ Grant Fisher treated the fans to an epic duel over the final few laps. It took a sub-4 1600m to break the rest of the field, and in the final strides, Fisher was able to re-pass Nur and get his second title of the week, the first time he’s completed the 10/5 double. Behind them, it was a similar battle for third between collegians Parker Wolfe and Graham Blanks, and it’s still not clear whether Wolfe or Blanks will end up on Team USA. Wolfe needs a few scratches in the world rankings ahead of him, and Blanks has the auto standard.

In the men’s 800m, Bryce Hoppel won his sixth straight U.S. title (counting indoors), but he did it in the fastest time of his career, a 1:42.77. His training partner Hobbs Kessler snagged third and qualifies for both the 800m and 1500m, the first time an American man has done that since 1976. In the women’s 100m hurdles, you could throw a blanket over the whole field with two hurdles remaining, but it was Masai Russell who closed the best and clocked a 12.25, the good for #4 on the world all-time list.

Rai Benjamin did Rai Benjamin things in the men’s 400m hurdles, cruising to a 46.47 world lead and meet record well ahead of the competition. The women’s 1500m was an absolute battle — more on that below. And then we closed the weekend with Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

McLaughlin-Levrone is used to being the star of the show, and honestly her biggest competition is usually the shadow of her past self. In the 400m hurdles final she had the benefit of a fast-starting Anna Cockrell on her outside, who stayed even with the Olympic champ for the first three hurdles and kept the pressure on early. But the real difference was that, coming around the final turn, McLaughlin-Levrone didn’t shut it down like she normally does through the rounds, instead powering down the homestretch to an incredible new world record 50.65.

For those keeping score at home, that’s the fifth time McLaughlin-Levrone has lowered the world record. When she started, the world record she was breaking was Dalilah Muhammad’s 52.16 from 2019, and now it’s an incredible 1.51 seconds faster.

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Carol joins us to talk about her unique path in the coaching profession. How unique? Not withstanding she grew up in Jamaica and attended New York Tech in the US, she wasn't a track coach for more than half her career as she focused on Information Systems, computer networking, and the like for such companies as ABC News and JP Morgan Chase. Her career path took a turn when she moved to Charlotte and walked into Providence Day HS and asked "Here's my resume, do you have any jobs?". She took this opportunity to coach Field Hockey and Track and Field which led to many state titles and successful athlete such as Anna Cockrell. Carol sits down to talk about recruiting, motherhood, program expectations, transitioning from high school to college coaching and more in this exciting fun interview on the Gill Connections podcast. 

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