Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the 400-meter world champion and four-time Olympic gold medallist, has announced that she is pregnant.
The 28-year-old, who married former NFL player Andre Levrone Junior in 2022, made the announcement on Instagram. “Made a human with my favourite human,” she wrote in the post, which accompanied a photoshoot on the beach of the pair.
McLaughlin-Levrone won 400m gold in Tokyo, Japan, last September, in a Championship-record time of 47.78s, the fastest one lap by any woman for 40 years, since Marita Koch’s 47.60s in 1985. That victory made her the first athlete to be a world champion in both the flat and the 400m hurdles.
The 400m hurdles had been her primary event from turning professional in 2016 through to 2024, a period in which she won two Olympic titles, one World Championship gold, and set six world records, including the current best 50.37s at the Paris Olympics in August 2024. Additionally, she has been a part of five U.S. women’s 4x400m teams that have won gold at a global Championships.
This season — the 2026 calendar year — is as close to an off year as things come. There is a World Indoor Championships in Poland this March, a competition McLaughlin-Levrone typically skips, and the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships takes place in Budapest in September.
That is something McLaughlin-Levrone is qualified for; it’s a new, biannual event to fill in the one ‘odd’ year out of four where there is no World Championships or summer Olympics, for which athletes qualifying by winning their event in Paris or Tokyo. There are straight semi-finals and finals for a streamlined competition of only the very-top athletes.
McLaughlin-Levrone will not be expected to compete despite being qualified in both the 400m hurdles and 400m. The next World Championships are in Beijing, China, in September 2027, and she will have a home Olympics in 30 months time in Los Angeles.
This naturally opens up an extra spot in the U.S. 400m team, with McLaughlin-Levrone one of nine different American women to break the fabled 50-second barrier for one lap since the start of 2024.
Aaliyah Butler (49.09s), who previously ran for University of Georgia, is the next quickest, while Olympic 200m champion Gabby Thomas has performed impressively over the distance.
