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Gabby Thomas has opened up about how the strengths of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in 400m hurdles made the rest of the team run without pressure to win the Olympics 4x400m relay gold.
Three-time Paris Olympics champion Gabby Thomas says running with her American compatriot Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the 4x400m meant they could run pressure-free.
Thomas feels McLaughlin-Levrone’s prowess in the 400m hurdles, where she is the Olympics champion and world record holder, made it an easy task for the rest of the Team USA 4x400m crew at the Paris 2024 Olympics as they could run knowing that she would make a major difference.
The US team had Thomas, McLaughlin-Levrone and Shamier Little as well as Alexis Holmes and they stormed to victory in the 4x400m relay in Paris in a world leading time and American record of 3:15.27.
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McLaughlin-Levrone ran the third leg before handing it over to Thomas and by then, she had set a big gap between herself and the chasing pack in the final 200m, something the latter says made their task smooth, carrying them to a gold medal.
“It's all grit. It's all grit and mental resilience. That's what it is. At the end of the day. Those reps that she practiced. Exactly. It was all you needed with an anchor like Sydney. You didn't need to be the best. Incredible team. Incredible team of women. I think we all trusted each other and that's what we needed. It showed,” Thomas told Set the Pace podcast.
The baton exchange between Thomas and McLaughlin-Levrone nearly got messed up as the two almost bumped into each other, coming close to stepping off the line, and the 200m Olympics champion revealed that was down to a lack of practice between the two sprinters.
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"For that relay, we didn't get to practice at all, so that was my first time ever doing an exchange with Sydney, and I didn't realize how she was going to be coming in that fast. There is nobody in the world who can finish a 400 that fast. I've never seen that before in my life; she came in so hot I was like, she almost ran me over" [35:36],” she recently shared in a podcast with Mike Jackson.
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