FELIX WINS RECORD 11TH TRACK MEDAL
Surpasses Lewis with 11th medal
TOKYO — Allyson Felix closed her eyes, on top of an Olympic medal stand one last time, and let the final moments of her unsurpassed Olympic career wash over her. She felt at peace for so many reasons, and three of them stood on the podium’s top level beside her. Sydney McLaughlin, Dalilah Muhammad and A thing Mu had helped Felix secure a record-setting gold medal. They had shown her the sport she was leaving possessed extraordinary caretakers.
“My role on this team has changed so much,” Felix said. “It was about doing my job and passing that baton.”
The U.S. women’s 1,600-meter relay team closed the track and field portion of the Tokyo Olympics in appropriate fashion. It provided both a resounding victory by an epic collection of women from the United States of America and a kaleidoscopic view of the past, present and future of the sport’s standard bearers.
McLaughlin, Felix, Muhammad and Mu ran four times around the National Stadium oval in 3 minutes, 16.85 seconds, delivering on the anticipation generated by the formation of a dream lineup.Mu sprinted across the line with an acre separating her and the rest of the field. Poland, the silver medalist, crossed nearly four seconds after Mu. By the time Jamaica won the bronze, the U.S. women were already high-fiving in celebration.
The gold medal pushed Felix’s career total to 11 one night after her remarkable bronze in the 400 meters had nudged it to 10. It gave Felix more medals than any woman in track and field history and broke the tie between her and Carl Lewis for most medals in American track and field history.
“It’s an amazing group of women right here,” McLaughlin said. “Once in a lifetime opportunity .”
The four women had ratcheted anticipation that they might be paired through their performance during the week. McLaughlin lowered her world record in the 400-meter hurdles. Muhammad, who had started the year with the best-ever time in the event, won silver in a time that also broke McLaughlin’s old record. Mu established herself, at 19, as a force in the sport with a dominant 800 meters gold. Felix is Allyson Felix, and you better never forget it.
Muhammad felt honored when she learned the lineup. Felix considered it a special team not only for its talent, but its competitive diversity. None of them were 400 specialists: Felix rose as a short sprinter, Muhammad and McLaughlin are hurdlers and Mu ran the 800 meters in Tokyo. When USA Track & Field announced the lineup, it referred to the quartet as the Dream Team.
Running on her 22nd birthday, McLaughlin started and seized a lead that would only grow with a 50.21-second lap. Felix ran a strong lap despite it being her fourth 400-meters race in five days. Muhammad’s third leg made it a rout. Mu provided an infomercial for her quest to double in the 400 and 800 in Paris, running the anchor leg in 48.32 seconds, the fastest lap of any woman in the race. Mu crossed in 3:16.85, the fifth-fastest time ever and fastest since 1993.
The gold capped a dominant track and field week for U.S. women. They captured 15 medals, five of them gold. (The U.S. men won 10 total and two golds, including no individual track golds for the first time.) If the U.S. women’s track and field team was its own nation, it would have ranked 18th in total medals and 17th in golds.
The United States did not provide the only unforgettable female performances. There was the herculean week of a lithe, Ethiopian-born Dutch super-runner named Sifan Hassan. Hassan captured bronze, gold and gold in the unthinkable treble of the 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 meters. The task required her to run 24,500 meters over six races, and Saturday night the last 150 provedelectric.
Aroundthe final turn of her final lap, Hassan bolted around Ethiopian Letesenbet Gidey, the woman who broke her world record in June two days after she had set it. Gidey faded for bronze, Kalkidan Gezahegne of Bahrain remained steady for silver and Hassan sprinted for the finish line,all by herself.
For the U.S. women running four laps together, there were never doubts. At the finish line, they huddled in a circle, their heads touching, and said a prayer together. They will never have something quite like what they had Saturdaynight. They shared a track, a podium and the final momentsof an idol’s career.
“We’re going to look back on this,” Muhammad said, “andjust think about how specialthis moment really was.”