Today, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is the world record holder and the reigning Olympic champion in the 400-meter hurdles. And while McLaughlin-Levrone’s talent was always prodigious, her international debuts didn’t immediately result in world-beating times. And it was her very first race in the international pro-circuit that made the runner realize talent alone wouldn’t be enough.

After running the first race of her pro career in Boston, the New Jersey native had her targets locked in on the 2019 Diamond League event in Shanghai. However, little did the hurdler know that years later, she would address it as the “strangest” race of her career. Yet, how did the race, where the hurdler needed to chug coffee to compete, help to defeat her Olympic rival that same year?

How a Diamond League race taught Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone crucial lessons

McLaughlin-Levrone faced her rival, Dalilah Muhammad, just a month after the Shanghai Diamond League event. This time it was in Oslo, and the thrilling race saw McLaughlin-Levrone shocking the 400-meter Olympic champion. So what changed? “I learned a lot during that trip about what to expect on the international circuit,” the champion wrote in Far Beyond Gold: Running from Fear to Faith.

“First, bring your own food,” the four-time Olympic gold medalist wrote. “Other countries have their customs and normal diets; your stomach may not always agree,” wrote Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. “Second, my body needed more time to adjust to the time change, more sleep than I had received, and more nutrients than I was feeding it,” added the hurdler.

In the excitement to defeat the then-reigning Olympic champion, the 25-year-old had made the rookie mistake of not acclimating her body and stepping away from her carefully curated diet. And while coffee gave her a much-needed energy boost, it wasn’t enough to beat the more experienced Olympic champion. Thankfully, McLaughlin-Levrone was a fast learner and implemented the right changes within a month.

However, even after making the improvements, beating Dalilah Muhammad wasn’t a walk in the park. In fact, the Olympic champion held on to the lead until the final stretch at Oslo. McLaughlin-Levrone found another gear in the final flat stretch, overtaking and beating Muhammad by a meter. And while the New Brunswick native had shocked her rival, it wouldn’t be the duo’s last dance.

The 25-year-old lost the rematch but won the rivalry

“It was clear, even moments after the race, that Dalilah was not happy,” McLaughlin-Levrone recalled how the two-time Olympic gold medalist reacted after losing to her in Oslo. However, the two champions reacted differently in the aftermath of that 2019 race. While McLaughlin-Levrone became complacent, Muhammad went straight back to training.

After beating the three-time Olympic medalist, the 25-year-old thought that maybe Muhammad wasn’t such an intimidating opponent after all. “Oh, maybe she’s not as scary as I thought,” confessed the 400-meter hurdles specialist. Unfortunately, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone couldn’t be more wrong, as the 34-year-old proved at the World Championship in Doha.

Although the world record holder realized she wasn’t improving, the track star couldn’t pinpoint or solve her problem in time. The result? Dalilah Muhammad walked away with the gold medal at Doha. However, it was McLaughlin-Levrone, who’d within the next two years, unlocked her potential. Desperate to redeem herself at Tokyo 2020, the hurdler would run the race of life at the 2021 U.S. Olympic trials.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone defeated Dalilah Muhammad in the 2021 trials with a world record time of 51.90 seconds. Since then, the four-time Olympic gold medalist has been untouchable. Since that fateful day, McLaughlin-Levrone has broken her own world record multiple times, currently holding a sub-51-second record of 50.37 seconds.

Needless to say, the hurdling specialist still follows what she learned in Shanghai.