Olympic champion Sydney McLaughlin set to open 2022 season at the Penn Relays

Sydney McLaughlin brings star power to the Penn Relays, which is back in action this week after missing two years due to the pandemic.

McLaughlin will race Saturday for the first time in 266 days. However, she won’t be in her signature event, the 400-meter hurdles. McLaughlin will contest the 100-meter hurdles against a field including Shermaine Williams and Amoi Brown of Jamaica and Mariam Abdul Rashid of Canada.

She shut down her 2021 season immediately after the Tokyo Olympic Games, where she won two gold medals for Team USA. McLaughlin set a world record of 51.46 seconds in winning the women’s 400-meter hurdles on August 4, and then ran the opening leg on the 4 x 400-meter relay team on August 7, her 22nd birthday.

McLaughlin had been slated to race in a distance medley relay for her sponsor New Balance on April 15 in Boston, but withdrew due to a minor hamstring issue. However, she still appeared at the event to greet fans.

With the first World Championships on U.S. soil taking place in Eugene, Oregon, in July, it appears McLaughlin, who is coached by Bob Kersee, is taking a similar approach to the one she took in 2021.

Last season, McLaughlin competed only in the shorter hurdles event in April and May — in addition to one 400-meter flat race — to tune up for her Olympic campaign. In five 100-meter hurdles races, her best time was 12.65 seconds on May 9 at the Golden Games.

McLaughlin then took almost a month off before running her first 400-meter hurdles race in Nashville, Tennessee on June 6. McLaughlin competed sparingly in 2021. Her only other events were three rounds at the U.S. Olympic Trials and three rounds at the Olympic Games.

The Penn Relays, also known as the Penn Relays Carnival, is the oldest and largest relay meet in the United States. Begun in 1895, it attracts more than 15,000 participants from the high school to elite level, as well as old-timers over age 75, who compete in more than 300 events at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field. The meet begins Thursday, but the main events are Saturday.

Growing up in New Jersey, McLaughlin is very familiar with the Penn Relays. As a high school senior in 2017, she anchored the Union Catholic 4 x 400 relay with an epic time of 50.37 seconds, pulling her team from eighth place to third. In the trials, she ran 50.78, which was heralded as the fastest time by a high school girl since the event began in 1980, until McLaughlin broke her own record.

Allyson Felix, the most decorated U.S. Olympian in track and field, will run the 300 meters, a distance between her specialties of the 200 and the 400. She previously announced this season will be her last.

On the men’s side, the 110-meter hurdles promises to be competitive, with Rio 2016 gold medalist Omar McLeod of Jamaica taking on Devon Allen, who was fourth at the Tokyo Games. Allen is the new hometown hero after signing with the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles. The former University of Oregon Duck will resume his football career after this season.

”I’m excited just to be an Eagle,” he said. “The fan base is amazing. They’re pretty fanatic, which I love.”

He told Around the Rings during the USATF Golden Games earlier this month he’s ready to get tackled again. “I don’t think I’ll get hit as hard,” he said. “In the football game now, it’s a little bit different. They can’t light you up as much. They made it a little bit more safe for everybody.”

Allen has set lofty goals for this season — a gold medal at the World Championships and a world record. “I gotta work hard. I have a time limit,” he said. “If you don’t set any goals, you’re not going to accomplish anything.”

But Allen is eager to join a team other than Team USA. “I think track is very individualistic,” he said. “You spend a lot of time by yourself training. In football, the goal is to be explosive and fast and do all that stuff well, but the team aspect of it is really interesting because you can play off each other’s energy and work together as opposed to you’re kind of on your own in track.”

Even though McLaughlin hasn’t run yet in 2022, she’s been busy. McLaughlin had her engagement photo shoot on April 23, which she dutifully posted on social media. Andre Levrone Jr. popped the question to McLaughlin in August, just a few weeks after she returned from Tokyo.

She said yes.

KEEP READING