They are Sydney McLaughlin, a Californian who turned 25 this Wednesday, and Femke Bol, a Dutch woman who is six months younger.
Her competitions have the charm of the unusual. And they always have an extraordinary result, like the 50.37s with which the American set a new world record, lowering by 28 hundredths the mark she herself set a month and a half ago (50.65s) and getting closer step by step to her great objective: to break the 50s. Bol, third again, as in Tokyo (52.15s), beaten in the last two hurdles by the American Anna Cockrell (51.87s), the fourth woman to break the 52s mark.
They have taken the 400m hurdles to another dimension but they hardly know each other. They have touched the unthinkable barrier of 50s, which in the 400m is already the frontier of excellence, but their duels have always taken place at a distance, except in the finals of the Tokyo Games, where the more experienced American won and broke the world record (51.46s), and in the World Championships in Oregon 22 (new victory for McLaughlin, new record, 50.68s). For them, it is the whole stage. It is the third time they have crossed paths.
McLaughlin, lane five, with ultra-sharp eyebrows, heroine’s dimples on her chin, is intense, severe, a woman aware of the transcendence of her actions; Femke Bol, lane six, with the cheeks of a teenager and the legs of a Bambi, and a little bit of her look, gives value to the lightness of the inconsequential, and laughs. The 400m hurdles, the final they are contesting, is the test of exact measurements, 45 metres flat on fire, then, the change of leg, the 14 steps to cover the six intervals of 35 metres between the first seven hurdles of 76.2 centimetres, 15 steps between the two following intervals, and less than five seconds to cover each one. It is the test in which a minimal error is a cataclysm, the origin of beauty, of the exceptional. The American, an exceptional sprinter, took an atomic start of 5.91s in the first 45 metres, forcing the Dutchwoman (6.13s) to die chasing. To make the mistake. Instead of trusting her race plan, she let herself be carried away by the McLaughlin hurricane. The first two intervals, 14 steps, Bol ran beyond her capabilities, in less than 4s. The last two, she was stiff, defeated by lactic acid, she, precisely, famous for her comebacks.
There cannot be two more different personalities, two cultures, two ways of seeing life. McLaughlin, who turned 25 last Wednesday, is six months older than Bol, and much more experienced, a child prodigy who does everything perfectly, including juggling, exceptional hand-eye coordination and spatial intelligence, who debuted at the age of 17 at the Rio Games. There cannot be two more similar footprints on the tartan, imperceptible, airy steps, they seem to float and yet they step hard so that the synthetic rubber gives them back the energy they lend in their few hundredths of a second contact with the ground. Both are extremely fast. McLaughlin runs the 200m in 22.07s, and the 400m in 48.74s, times that would have allowed her to be the favourite in both distances also in Paris, like Bol in the 400m (49.17s).
They are equally meticulous, but one, the American trained in Los Angeles by Bob Kersee’s clan, from which came athletes as different as Florence Griffith or Allyson Felix, thanks God for her triumphs and her talent, and on social networks, where she is omnipresent, she publishes a Bible verse. She has a YouTube channel where she tells of her daily life, she wrote an autobiography at 22, she advertises anti-wrinkle creams and is married to a mid-level NFL footballer, André Levrone, who retired at 25. Bol’s boyfriend, rational and simple, is Ben Broeders, a 5.85m tall Belgian pole vaulter. Her life is not told in gossip magazines or on channels or networks, which she does not frequent.
Athletics is made up of unique geniuses who reign supreme, unchallenged, during their heyday: Lewis, Elliott, Snell, Zatopek, Mondo, Bolt, El Guerruj. Sometimes, rarely, orbits get tangled up and astral confluences occur, the simultaneous explosion of exceptional talents in the same event, the origin of Cainite rivalries that divide and shake fans, and they are not enjoyed as much as when they occur, like when, for example, Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe gouged each other’s eyes out every mile, every 800m or 1,500m in which they crossed paths, and world records fell and enmities, tension, and enthusiasm grew. They happen so rarely that they become memorable. But there are even more exceptional conjunctions, confluences with hardly any collisions, such as the one between Sydney McLaughlin and Femke Bol in a race as remote as the 400m hurdles, which puts them into orbit and leaves the fans cheering for the arrival of the afterlife; who will be the first to go under 50?
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