Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone chasing a world record long considered unreachable

For nearly 40 years, Marita Koch’s 400-meter world record has been track and field’s rock of ages.

On Oct. 6, 1985, Koch, representing East Germany at the World Cup in Canberra, Australia ran 47.60 seconds, knocking nearly four-tenths of a second off the previous world record and establishing a global standard that would loom over the sport in the ensuing decades, a mark increasingly viewed as both suspect and unapproachable. Koch broke 16 world records in the sprints in the 1970s and ’80s, but the notion that her 400 world record was unobtainable has been reinforced by the belief it was achieved with the aid of banned performance-enhancing substances.

“All world records are certainly in some way an exception, so now the next person has to come, or has to be born, who is ready to break the record,” Koch told the British Broadcasting Company in 2014. “At some point, that time will come.”

Many in the sport believe that person and time have finally arrived.

At the Diamond League’s Meeting de Paris on Friday, Olympic and World 400 hurdles champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, born 13 years and 208 days after Koch’s historic run Down Under, will open her season, a three-month epic leading to the World Championships in August that revolves around the sport’s most anticipated storyline in decades: can she break a world record that has seemed unbreakable for so long?

“No question in my mind,” Ato Boldon, the former World 200 champion, said when asked if McLaughlin-Levrone could break Koch’s record. “Absolutely no question in my mind.”

Koch’s 47.60 became McLaughlin-Levrone’s obvious next target after she lowered the 400 hurdles world record for the fourth time in 14 months last summer, running 50.68 to win the event at the World Championships in Eugene and then coming back two days later with a 47.91 split on Team USA’s victorious 4×400 relay.

“After Sydney broke that 400 hurdle world record (at Worlds) I go ‘OK, I know you’re going after that 400 world record,’” said Gail Devers, the two-time Olympic 100 gold medalist while coached by Bob Kersee, who now coaches McLaughlin-Levrone. “I just know that’s Bobby.”

Indeed, Kersee has not only set his sights on McLaughlin-Levrone lowering Koch’s 400 mark, the second-oldest women’s track record in an Olympic event, but on Athing Mu taking down the oldest record, the 800 standard of 1 minute, 53.25 seconds that was set by Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983.

“The two records he will get,” Devers said.

“Those records are in other people’s minds something that can’t be done. In the camp of Bobby Kersee and those who are in that camp, they are just waiting until the time happens.”

McLaughlin-Levrone, Mu and Kersee haven’t shied away from taking aim at two records.

“I mean, it’s always been there for me for a long time,” McLaughlin-Levrone said of Koch’s record. “It’s just looked like a number that’s impossible, to be honest when you look at it. But when you really do the math and you start to see like different pieces of it kind of like click in practice. It’s like, ‘oh, it is doable and it’s just a matter of putting it together and making sure that all the pieces are right.’

“It’s a very daunting number to look at, I’ll tell you that. But at the end of the day, I think if we can take the 400 hurdles to 50.6, I think 47.6 isn’t too far off.”

But for decades no one has seriously challenged the 47.60.

Koch lowered the 400 world record six times between July 1978 and July 1982, taking the standard from 49.29 to 48.16. With Koch focusing on the 200 at the 1983 World Championships, Kratochvilova became the first woman under 48 seconds, winning the world title in 47.99.

Two years later in Canberra, Kratochvilova, running her final race, was reduced to a spectator as Koch blazed a 22.4 first 200, opening a large gap on the rest of the field that she stretched all the way to the finish.

“She disregarded the rest,” the BBC’s David Coleman said during his call of the race.

Kratochvilova finished fifth in what were almost two separate races – Koch racing the clock and the rest of the field competing against each other.

The ensuing years saw generation after generation fail to close that gap on Koch.

No woman has broken 48 seconds since then. France’s Marie-José Pérec won the 1992 and 1996 Olympic 400 titles but never ran faster than 48.25.

No one has even been within a half-second of Koch’s record this century, and only two have even been within a second. Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser ran 48.14 in winning the 2019 World Championships. Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas claimed the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo with a 48.36 clocking. Eid Naser missed the 2021 Olympic Games because of a two-year suspension for missing drug tests.

Eid Naser will join McLaughlin-Levrone in the Paris 400 along with Marileidy Paulino, the Olympic and World Championships silver medalist in the 400 from the Dominican Republic and the world leader so far this season at 48.98.

Koch’s record has remained so elusive for so long, critics charge, because it was fueled by performance-enhancing drugs.

Dr. Werner Franke and his wife Brigitte Berendonk in 1991 obtained extensive but incomplete secret documents related to the state-sponsored doping program administered by Stasi, the country’s secret police, that included athlete names, drug dosage and time schedules for East German athletes. Franke and Berendonk in a book revealed that the Stasi documents outlined that Koch used the banned anabolic steroid Oral-Turinabol between 1981 and 1984.

Koch threatened to sue Franke and Berendonk in 1992 but never took legal action.

“I have a clear conscience,” Koch told the BBC in 2014. “I never tested positive, I never did anything which I should not have done at that time.”

While Koch was rarely if ever tested outside of post-competition doping controls at major events like the Olympic Games or World Championships, McLaughlin-Levrone is subject to no-notice out-of-competition testing by at least three different agencies. She was tested 15 times in 2021 and 11 in 2022 by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency alone.

As the reigning World champion in the 400 hurdles, she has an automatic entry into August’s World Championships, so she will focus on 400 at the U.S. Championships (July 6-9), with a full-fledged attempt at Koch’s record coming later in the summer at a Diamond League meet or possibly at Worlds. Kersee and McLaughlin-Levrone have yet to finalize their plans for Worlds. Running both the 400 and the 400 hurdles at Worlds would be difficult although not impossible. The first round of the 400 hurdles and the 400 semifinals fall 2 hours, 20 minutes apart on Aug. 21.

Koch’s 400 record isn’t the only challenge McLaughlin-Levrone and Kersee plan to take on. Both have talked about focusing on the 100 hurdles or the 200. Then there’s the 50-second barrier in the 400 hurdles.

“Sydney was ready to run under 50,” Kersee said, “when she ran 50-point at Worlds.”

“I think Sydney can go from the 100-meter hurdles to the 400-meter hurdles and the same thing with the 200 and 400 at a world-class level,” Kersee continued. “I think this year is to let Sydney focus on the (400) in terms of learning that event. It’s different than the 400-meter hurdles in terms of having that open space. You don’t have the hurdles dictate the stride pattern, it’s more of a sprint race so you have to be focused on yourself. Run with blinders on. Don’t get caught up in somebody’s rhythm and pattern and so once again, gradually, teach her how to sprint in terms of when it comes down to sub-22 (seconds for) 200 meters.”

At some point this season, in Eugene or Zurich or Budapest, McLaughlin-Levrone will likely find herself alone in that open space, the rest of the world gasping in her wake, chasing not Koch or history but pushing herself to the limits of both body and imagination, racing, as Koch did nearly 40 years ago, ignoring barriers placed by others.

“I mean, obviously, people are looking at the 400 record, you know, maybe moving to the shorter, moving to the 200, so on and so forth,” McLaughlin-Levrone said. “But, if I’m being completely honest, I just want to run and see how fast I can run every single day. Whether I break records or don’t break records, or win this or win that like everyday, to me, it’s a mental hurdle of I don’t always want to do this, but I’m going to do this and being able to push myself to do things that I didn’t think I was capable of. That sounds like a very generic answer, but it’s the honest truth. I think when you place too many expectations on yourself, you put yourself in a position to be, I don’t know, defined by them if you don’t reach them, and I don’t want to do that.”