World Championships: McLaughlin anchors USA to 4x400m gold on record-setting final day

Sydney McLaughlin followed her astonishing world record by taking the final victorious lap of the World Athletics Championships on Sunday, pulling away in the 4x400-metre relay to close a US runaway and give the Americans their record 33rd medal of the meet.

McLaughlin turned a 0.73-second lead into a 2.93-second laugher on the anchor lap, adding this burst of speed to the world record she set two nights earlier in the 400 hurdles and guiding her team to a winning time of three minutes, 17.79 seconds.

Two more world records were broken on the day – in the first and last action of the last session at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan opened the evening by setting the record for the 100m hurdles in the semifinals with a time of 12.12 seconds. She came back about 90 minutes later to win the gold medal. Her winning time was actually faster — 12.06 — but the wind was too strong, so that mark doesn’t go in the books.

“When I watched the record, I was like ‘Whoa, who did that?‘” Amusan said.

And after McLaughlin was done with her last lap, pole vaulter Armand Duplantis of Sweden cleared 6.21m (20 feet, 4 1/2 inches) to best his world record by 0.01 to earn Sweden's first gold medal of the meet. That was 12 fewer than the Americans.

The last was especially sweet, as it also marked the 14th and final world gold for 36-year-old Allyson Felix, who came out of retirement to run in the preliminary of the 4x400m and, so, gets a medal. She finishes her career with a record 20 world medals, overall.

“We’re a family, we stick together,” McLaughlin said. “Allyson came out of retirement to get us here, so we wanted to do this.”

Tobi Amusan during the medal ceremony after winning gold and setting a new world record in