As she came into the final bend of the women’s 400 metres hurdles final, Femke Bol was exactly where she wanted to be. She was right behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, just as her coach Laurent Meuwly had planned. “The goal for Femke will be to stay as close as possible down the straight,” Meuwly said, and here she was, two-tenths behind. The problem was, it was the last time Bol was in the right place all evening. McLaughlin-Levrone, the greatest hurdler in history, ran stronger, harder and faster down the straight, pulling right past Bol and everyone else en route to her second Olympic gold and a deserved place as the greatest track and field athlete of her era.

When McLaughlin-Levrone reached the 10th hurdle, she had just broken her own world record, set in June at the US qualifiers, which she won, too, finishing in 50.37 seconds, 0.28 seconds faster than the old mark. McLaughlin-Levrone was already the first female athlete to break five world records in the same event, and she has just broken a sixth. In three years, she has single-handedly shaved almost two seconds off the world record. Or, to put it another way, she has beaten the record she had set before the race by a full 3.5%, which is twice the time Usain Bolt set in the men’s 100m.

When McLaughlin-Levrone runs, the rest of us watch in real time someone pushing the boundaries of what is possible in an athletic sport.

This final was expected to be one of the biggest races of the Games. The stadium was bathed in bright orange because of the many Dutch fans who had come to watch, making it look like a big bag with too many gummy bears in it. In the 50 years that women have been competing in the 400m hurdles, exactly 25 athletes have run under 53 seconds, three under 52 seconds and only two under 51 seconds, namely Bol and McLaughlin-Levrone, who ran side by side in lanes five and six. Between them they had already run 14 of the 15 fastest times in history.

McLaughlin-Levrone had won her only two head-to-head races before this one, the 2021 Olympic final and the World Championship final a year later. But since then, she’d battled a few different injuries and experimented with a few different disciplines, competing sporadically. In the meantime, Bol had won pretty much everything there was to compete in. But as Meuwly said before the race, the one thing she didn’t have to deal with was what it was like to race against someone even faster than her. Here, she had to deal with it, and it hurt.

Bol finished third. She was beaten for silver by McLaughlin-Levrone’s U.S. teammate Anna Cockrell, who ran a personal best of 51.87 seconds. Bol finished in 52.15 seconds, well under the winning time, but still the 19th fastest time in history. She was completely distraught afterward, leaving the finish line crying. In another time and place, she would be the greatest herself. She has it all. She proved that last Saturday when she won the gold medal for the Netherlands in the 4×400-meter mixed relay, with an astonishing final leg that took the team from fourth place to first.

But McLaughlin-Levrone is bigger still. In this race, Bol was really just there to put McLaughlin-Levrone’s accomplishments into perspective, like one of those little diagrams of a man that shows you exactly how big the building in the picture is in real life.

Bol is unlucky that McLaughlin-Levrone chose the 400m hurdles. In fact, she could have done almost anything she wanted on the track. Her personal bests in the 100m and 100m hurdles would have made her a contender for the final in both events, her personal best in the 200m would have given her the silver medal behind Gabby Thomas, and in the 400m she would have been the fastest qualifier for Friday night’s final. She has talked about focusing on the flat race, she is already the 11th fastest in history here. And she can juggle pretty much anything you ask of her, too.

That tells you more about what makes her so great than you might think. Because one of the reasons McLaughlin-Levrone is so good in the 400-meter hurdles is because she can lead her jumps with either foot. While most hurdlers adjust their strides to put their preferred foot in front, McLaughlin-Levrone can take them as they come at her and switch between her left and right feet without stuttering, stumbling or breaking her stride. It takes a juggler’s sense of coordination to do this at high speed. Her brain has to be moving as fast as her feet when she’s making the high-speed adjustments to her stride.

With her sheer straight-line speed, single-lap endurance and impeccable technique, McLaughlin-Levrone is virtually unbeatable. Even for someone as brilliant as Bol. In the minutes after McLaughlin-Levrone crossed the finish line, someone in the crowd handed her a crown to wear and the U.S. flag to go with it. It was a perfect fit.