India, Sept. 18 -- World Championships or Olympics, hurdles or flat, trust Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to own the one lap races like few have in history.

Sure enough, the Sydney show was a blockbuster even at the Tokyo worlds. Not in the 400m hurdles where is a six-time world record holder and two-time Olympic champion, but in the 400m flat in which she grabbed her first gold at a major global competition.

And in some style. The American star ran the second fastest time ever, and the first sub-48s time in more than four decades, as she won the women's 400m final clocking 47.78s. It shattered the previous Worlds record, and lowered the 48-second bar for the first time since the 1983 Worlds in which Jarmila Kratochvilova of erstwhile Czecho...