Sydney McLaughlin won the 400m hurdles title Tuesday, breaking the world record with a 51.46-second finish.
To clear her head, the 21-year-old from Dunellen, N.J. logged off social media for weeks prior to the final.
“When you have a lot of outside voices coming at you, it can definitely alter what you have going on internally,” said McLaughlin, who ran for Union Catholic High School.
McLaughlin has over 146,000 Twitter followers and over 800,000 Instagram followers, but at the Tokyo Olympic Games, she made sure all her focus was on the track.
McLaughlin surged past Dalilah Muhammad in the home stretch, edging her teammate – with whom she has an “iron sharpens iron” relationship – for the gold medal.
At the 2019 world championships, Muhammad barely beat McLaughlin. At the U.S. Olympic trials in June, McLaughlin broke Muhammad’s world record.
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Prior to Tuesday, McLaughlin’s focus was on beating Muhammad, bronze medalist Femke Bol and the field to win on the world’s biggest stage. And if it meant logging off social media for a few weeks, it was a small price to pay.
“A lot of that is outside things I can’t control and I just tried to minimize it,” McLaughlin said. “I stayed off social media, stayed in my room, talked to friends and family and stuck to what I knew.”