Dalilah Muhammad, former 400 hurdles record holder and Olympic champion, saying farewell in Tokyo

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TOKYO (AP) — Dalilah Muhammad is about to run her last race. For the two-time Olympic and two-time world champion — and former world-record holder in the 400-meter hurdles — it's the right time and Tokyo is the right place.

“I don't feel any nervousness and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing,” the 35-year-old American said Wednesday after qualifying fourth and advancing to Friday's final at the track and field world championships.

“But I think it's a good thing just knowing how to enjoy these moments.”

She wanted to step away a year ago at the Paris Olympics, but she failed to qualify from the U.S. trials, slowed by an Achilles injury that also troubled her in 2023.

“We had to take down the year,” she said of last season.

Femke Bol of the Netherlands led qualifiers for the finals in 52.31 seconds, followed by Gianna Woodruff of Panama (52.66), American Jasmine Jones (53.01), and Muhammad (53.14).

Jones came off the track on Wednesday and, though she said she doesn't know Muhammad well, has childhood images of the biggest star in hurdling at the time.

“I watched her on TV when I was in high school, middle school," said the 23-year-old Jones. “So getting to race her is a big honor.”

Muhammad is back in Tokyo, and it's the perfect place for the farewell. It was in a virtually empty stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — delayed a year by the COVID pandemic — that she ran the fastest time of her life.

Unfortunately, she was only the silver medalist behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. McLaughlin-Levrone broke the world record in 51.46. But so did Muhammad in 51.58, both under McLaughlin-Levrone's old mark of 51.90.

McLaughlin-Levrone, who has since lowered the 400-hurdles record to 50.37, has stepped away from hurdling in the worlds to run the flat 400. That provides an opening for Muhammad and everyone else.

Bol said she's lamenting Muhammad's departure, the bronze medalist four years ago behind the two Americans.

“It feels a bit sad that she’s leaving because she’s such a great athlete and she’s been such a role model for me," Bol said. “It’s great to see her back at such a high level right where she needs to be.”

Muhammad won Olympic gold in the 400 hurdles in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, and she added a relay gold in Tokyo.

But her finest season was probably 2019 when she set the world record at 52.20, and lowered it again to 52.16 to win the 400 hurdles at the worlds in Doha, and then added a relay gold.

Muhammad said she's running with a slight Achilles injury that has slowed her training.

“This year has just been about listening to my body and doing what it needs when it needs it," she said. “This is what we've been working for all year.”

And going out on top.

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