Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone enters 400m among Los Angeles Grand Prix headliners

By OlympicTalkApr 28, 2023, 10:56 AM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the Olympic and world champion and world record holder in the 400m hurdles, is an early entry into the 400m without hurdles for the Los Angeles Grand Prix on May 27, according to USA Track and Field.

Organizers announced headline athletes Thursday, including a 100m hurdles field with the two fastest women in history (Nigerian Tobi Amusan and American Keni Harrison) and Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico. The men’s shot put includes the Americans who swept the 2022 World Championships medals: world record holder Ryan Crouser, Joe Kovacs and Josh Awotunde.

NBC Sports and Peacock air meet coverage on May 27 from 4:30-6 p.m. ET.

While McLaughlin-Levrone’s entry into the flat 400m is notable given her comments last year about wanting to add the event to her program, note four things:

*Her coach, Bob Kersee, is one of the Los Angeles Grand Prix organizers, so it’s no surprise she is on the entry list.
*The women’s 400m hurdles is not on the meet program.
*Athlete fields are subject to change, especially a month out from the meet.
*McLaughlin-Levrone often races events other than the 400m hurdles at non-championship meets and has not publicly said whether she plans to race the flat 400m at July’s USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships, the qualifying meet for August’s world championships.

It would be her first time racing an individual flat 400m since April 2021 and the third time in her professional career dating to 2019.

McLaughlin-Levrone said after last season that she wanted to add the flat 400m to her program while not giving up the 400m hurdles just yet.

Her personal best in the 400m is 50.07 seconds, set in 2018 as a University of Kentucky freshman. That time would have placed fourth at last July’s world championships.

A better measure of her potential is her 4x400m relay split from those worlds: 47.91 seconds — making her the seventh-fastest relay performer in history and second-fastest in the last 34 years behind Allyson Felix. Relay splits, outside of leadoff legs, are also usually significantly faster than an athlete’s best individual 400m time due to running starts.

McLaughlin-Levrone has a decision to make for this summer. She has a bye into the 400m hurdles at August’s worlds in Budapest as reigning world champion. That gives her leeway to race the flat 400m instead at July’s USATF Outdoor Championships, where the top three are in line to qualify for the individual event at worlds.

Nobody has ever won both events at a single world championships. Few, if any, have raced both at a worlds.

Come August’s worlds, the women’s 400m hurdles first round heats start 2 hours and 20 minutes before the women’s 400m semifinals. Top-level pros rarely race multiple times in one session in a distance longer than 200 meters at any meet.

The Olympic schedule is as accommodating as ever for a possible women’s 400m-400m hurdles double in 2024.

For the first time in Olympic history, none of the rounds of those races take place on the same day at the Games. But doing both through the finals would still be a challenge: racing six consecutive days at the Olympics (and a seventh day at the end if adding the 4x400m relay).

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Adeline Gray, mom to twins, makes wrestling worlds team; Jordan Burroughs defeated

By OlympicTalkJun 10, 2023, 9:34 PM EDT

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Adeline Gray, a six-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist, returned from having twins last July to make the U.S. wrestling team for September’s world championships.

Gray, 32, swept 19-year-old Kennedy Blades in a best-of-three series for the 76kg spot at Saturday’s Final X, the event that determines most of the world team across men’s and women’s freestyle and Greco-Roman. On April 29, Blades earned a 10-point mercy-rule win over Gray at the U.S. Open in Gray’s first competition since childbirth.

“It’s like every three weeks it’s a little bit more used to my body,” Gray, who returned to training in January while recovering from an ab separation from the pregnancy, said last month after winning a tournament to qualify for Final X. “There’s pieces of wrestling that you have to put together. It’s just going to take me a little bit of time.”

Every active male U.S. Olympic gold medalist also made the world team except for Jordan Burroughs, who was ousted by Chance Marsteller 8-3 in their third and deciding 79kg match. Burroughs. who won the opening match in the best-of-three series, saw his streak of world championship teams end at nine, dating to his first full freestyle season in 2011.

Burroughs, 34, earned a medal at all of those world championships, including six golds, plus his 2012 Olympic gold, to break the record for most global titles for a U.S. wrestler.

Burroughs has competed in the non-Olympic 79kg division since missing the Tokyo Olympic team in his familiar 74kg class. Now, Burroughs must move back to an Olympic weight ahead of the April Olympic Trials, where he may have to dethrone four-time world champion Kyle Dake to make the team for Paris.

Olympic champs who made the world team: Kyle Snyder (who made it when J’den Cox forfeited due to injury), Gable Steveson (who swept Mason Parris) and David Taylor (who swept Aaron Brooks).

Gray was the most decorated woman to qualify Saturday. Tokyo Olympic champion Tamyra Mensah-Stock announced her retirement from wrestling last month to join the WWE. Rio Olympic champion Helen Maroulis was granted a delay for her series with Xochitl Mota-Pettis for medical reasons.

Past moms to make world teams include Hall of Famers Tricia Saunders and Kristie Davis, who both won multiple world titles as moms. Saunders and Davis competed before women’s wrestling was added to the Olympics in 2004.

A USA Wrestling spokesperson could not think of a mom who has made an Olympic team, but couldn’t say for sure, when asked in April. At next April’s Olympic Trials, Gray can achieve the feat while also bidding to break the record for oldest female U.S. Olympic wrestler by nearly three years.

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Iga Swiatek wins third French Open title, fourth Grand Slam, but this final was not easy

By OlympicTalkJun 10, 2023, 5:30 PM EDT

Iga Swiatek won her third French Open title and her fourth Grand Slam overall, pushed to a third set in a major final for the first time.

Swiatek, a 22-year-old Pole, outlasted unseeded Czech Karolina Muchova 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 on Saturday at Roland Garros. Muchova tested Swiatek, the only singles player in the Open Era to win their first seven major final sets. She became the first player to take a set off Swiatek in the tournament.

Swiatek looked en route to another major final sweep, up 3-0 in the second set. She then committed 11 unforced errors (versus four winners) over the rest of the set as Muchova rallied back (with 10 winners versus 11 unforced errors).

Muchova then won the first eight points of the third set. Swiatek, under the most pressure of her career on the sport’s biggest stages, passed the test. The players exchanged breaks of serve, and Muchova had another break point for a chance to serve for the championship, but Swiatek fended her off.

“After so many ups and downs, I kind of stopped thinking about the score,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to use my intuition more because I knew that I can play a little bit better if I’m going to get a little bit more loosened up.”

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

No woman lower than the 14th seed has beaten both world Nos. 1 and 2 at a Grand Slam since the WTA rankings began in 1975. Muchova, ranked 43rd, nearly pulled it off.

“The feeling is a little bitter because I felt it was very close,” she said. “But overall, I mean, to call myself Grand Slam finalist, it’s amazing achievement.”

The French Open finishes Sunday with the men’s final. Novak Djokovic faces Casper Ruud, eyeing a 23rd major title to break his tie with Rafael Nadal for the men’s singles record. NBC, NBCSports.com/live, the NBC Sports app and Peacock air live coverage at 9 a.m. ET.

Go back to the fall 2020 French Open. Swiatek, a 54th-ranked teen, won the tournament without dropping a set for her first tour-level title.

Since, she climbed to the top of the rankings (and has stayed there for 62 weeks running), tied the longest WTA win streak in 32 years (37 matches in a row in 2022) and won majors on clay and hard courts.

She beat challengers from different categories in major finals: a Slam champ (Sofia Kenin), a teen phenom (Coco Gauff), an emerged rival (Ons Jabeur) and now an unseeded (because of injuries)-but-dangerous veteran in Muchova. Swiatek is the youngest woman to reach four major titles since Serena Williams in 2002.

Yet this French Open began with talk of a Big Three in women’s tennis rather than singular dominance. Since last year’s French Open, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka and Russian-born Kazakh Elena Rybakina both won their first major and beat Swiatek multiple times.

Swiatek faced neither in Paris but still called it “a pretty stressful tournament,” noting a right thing injury that forced her to retire during her last match before the tournament.

Sabalenka was stunned by Muchova in Thursday’s semifinals, the erratic serving and nerves of her past reappearing. Rybakina had to withdraw earlier in the tournament due to illness.

Next up: the grass court season and Wimbledon, where Swiatek hasn’t made it past the fourth round in three tries. She did win the 2018 junior title at the All England Club. but Sabalenka and Rybakina have had more recent success there.

If Swiatek can lift the Venus Rosewater Dish, she will be an Australian Open shy of a career Grand Slam. Her chances of adding an Olympic gold medal to that collection are very high, given Roland Garros hosts tennis at the 2024 Paris Games.

“I’m not setting these crazy records or goals for myself,” she said. “I know that keeping it cool is the best way to do it for me.”

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