U.S. track and field championships: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and more to watch in Eugene

It’s trials time.

The 2025 World Athletics Championships are just over six weeks away.

Starting today (Thursday) and ending Sunday, the top U.S. athletes will assemble at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., for the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships to determine who goes to Tokyo in September.

Every nation is permitted to send a maximum of three men and three women per discipline to worlds. The exception to this rule is one bonus spot for wild cards.

First introduced in 1997, these are automatic qualification byes given to current individual world champions. Olympic gold medalists from Paris do not get an automatic wild card; guaranteed entry goes to the world champions from Budapest in 2023.

Eight Americans have wild cards: Noah Lyles (100- and 200-meter); Grant Holloway (110-meter hurdles); Sha’Carri Richardson (100m); Ryan Crouser (shot put), who is injured and will not compete this week; Chase Jackson (shot put); Laulauga Tausaga (discus); Katie Moon (pole vault); Brooke Andersen (hammer throw — she was the leading athlete on the continental tour, which earns a hammer-specific wild card).

For everyone else, there are two other primary ways to qualify, which World Athletics calls its “dual pathway.”

The conventional route is to produce a qualification standard-performance (within the qualification window: Aug. 1 2024 to Aug. 24 this year) and then finish top three at trials. Both parts are required. If a wild-carded athlete finishes top three, then fourth place gets their spot.

The other qualification method is world ranking. Rankings are determined by a points-score average (World Athletics standardizes performances into points) of an athlete’s five best results in a 12-month period; for 5,000m and 3,000m steeplechase, it is an average of three performances, and two for 10,000m, heptathlon and decathlon.

World Athletics considers the rankings as a clearer, more consistent indication of talent compared to the standard, which an athlete only needs to hit once.

Take the women’s high jump, where only eight women have the entry standard (1.97m). The sole American in that is Rachel Glenn, but with 36 spaces to be filled, 13th-ranked Vashti Cunningham, the U.S., No 2, should qualify by position and without needing the standard.

Here’s what to watch for at the championships, which will be streamed in the U.S. on NBC/Peacock, with on-demand coverage available at USATF.TV.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone: 400m but no hurdles

In her quest to become the greatest one-lapper, Olympic 400-meter hurdles champion and world-record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has switched to the flat.

She missed worlds two years ago because of a knee injury, so she has to race to qualify for Tokyo. Her 50.37-second winning time in Paris last August smashed her own world record, as the 25-year-old defended her 400m hurdles Olympic title from Tokyo.

She raced the 400m flat at the 2023 U.S. trials when she had the wild card (after winning the 400m hurdles at the 2022 world championships).

Two years ago, she ran 48.74 for 400m, which ranks 12th all-time and makes her the second-fastest American woman — behind Sanya Richards-Ross (48.70), whose national record dates back to 2006.

McLaughlin-Levrone won over 400m at the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field on July 5, with a season’s best time of 49.43.

She has raced more this year than in other seasons, doubling over the 400m flat and hurdles at two Grand Slam Track meets, but is by no means a certainty to make the team.

Three other American women (Aaliyah Butler, Gabby Thomas, Isabella Whittaker) have better times than McLaughlin-Levrone this year over 400m. Thomas, however, is racing the 100m and 200m.

The 400m flat sets McLaughlin-Levrone up better for the relays: she has raced the 4x400m at the past four global championships and ran the fastest leg in last summer’s Olympic final (48.60), where the U.S. women won gold in a North American-record time (3:15.27).

The 400m flat heats, semifinals and final all take place one day earlier than the respective 400m hurdles rounds in Tokyo.

Lyles and a 200m title defense

“I’m still the national champion. I don’t believe in giving up titles,” Lyles said of the 200m before the London Diamond League in mid-July, where he ran 10-flat for his 100m season opener.

“I earned that title and I need to race it. Somebody needs to take it from me if they want it. We’re going to run every round.”

Lyles won the 100m and 200m at trials last year, with his 19.53 a 200m trials record. He holds the three fastest times for that distance at Hayward Field, where he set the American record (19.31s) at the 2022 world championships.

He is registered for the 100m but will likely not race it. Before London, he said: “We don’t see a reason to double because we feel that would be too much in four days. It might change.”

Lyles, having won in 2019, 2022 and 2023, could match Usain Bolt, who is currently the only man to four-peat at worlds over 200m. He is the first man since Bolt in 2015 to hold the 100m and 200m titles simultaneously.

The Quincys and the 400m

Quincy Hall: absent. The 400m Olympic champion from Paris — taking the first U.S. men’s gold in the distance since LaShawn Merritt in 2008 — had been progressing nicely in 2025.

A textbook slow opener of 45.99 became a season’s best of 44.22 when he won at the Rome Diamond League in early June.

Hall, though, scratched the Pre Classic, and whatever prevented him from racing there does not appear sufficiently healed.

He produced one of the performances of the Games last summer, out-kicking Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith very late to beat him on the line, finishing in a personal-best 43.40 that moved him up to fourth all-time.

As the bronze medalist from Budapest, Hall does not have the wild card. That means a real shootout could occur for the third spot, should Khaleb McRae and Jacory Patterson qualify as one and two (as the form book reads).

Vernon Norwood, Chris Bailey and Bryce Deadmon will all fancy their chances, especially with 2022 world champion Michael Norman still recovering from surgery last year — he has not raced at all in 2025.

Enter 17-year-old Quincy Wilson. His 44.10 time earlier this month was the third occasion where he has bettered his own 400m world under-18 best, and he is the third-fastest this year of those attending trials.

Wilson was the youngest male American track athlete last summer when he went as part of the relay squad, and became the youngest such gold medalist for the U.S. by leading out the men’s 4x400m relays in the heats.

Wilson in the Olympic men’s 4x400m relay heats last summer (Simon Bruty/Anychance/Getty Images)

He did not race the final, but heat runners get medals too. It is a real chance for him to make the team individually.

Muhammad and Brazier — 2019 world champions making comebacks

At the 2019 world championships in Doha, Donavan Brazier won over 800m and Dalilah Muhammad took double gold from the 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay.

Injuries have derailed Brazier’s career since. Aged 28, he has not made another global championship.

Muhammad, now 35, won bronze in the 400m hurdles at the 2022 world championships (hosted at Hayward Field), but did not qualify for the 2023 worlds or 2024 Olympics.

Both are having their best seasons in years and have the entry standards.

Muhammad is running her fastest times since 2021, when she went to the Olympics. She is the second-fastest American woman this year in the 400m hurdles (52.58 seconds from Monaco in early July), behind only McLaughlin-Levrone.

Brazier has raced three 800m races this summer and gone faster each time, most recently clocking 1:43.08 at the London Diamond League. It makes him the third-fastest American man in 2025.

Bryce Hoppel set a trials record last summer of 1:42.77 to take the national title, and with the current depth of U.S. men over two laps, sub-1:43 might be needed for a top-three spot.

Two stacked 1,500m races

It is the Olympic Champion (Cole Hocker) versus the Olympic Bronze medallist (Yared Nuguse) versus the former road mile World Champion (Hobbs Kessler) in the men’s 1,500m.

That race also features Nathan Green, who won his second NCAA 1,500m Championship this summer, plus Liam Murphy, Ethan Strand and Gary Martin, who are all 3:33 guys and rank first, second and fourth on the all-time collegiate 1,500m lists. Fast or tactical, that race should bring fireworks.

In the women’s race, eight athletes have the entry standard — though Elle St Pierre will not be racing, having given birth earlier this year.

Last year’s trials saw Nikki Hiltz, Emily Mackay and St Pierre all go under 3:56 to make the team. Sinclaire Johnson has really stamped her mark this year and arrives as the second-fastest American over 1,500m — she took Hiltz’s North American record in the mile at the London Diamond League, clocking 4:16.32s.

“Not going to lie, I was kind of happy I was the only American here (in London), so everyone else at home had to sit on the couch and watch,” Johnson said afterwards. “I’m feeling really confident going into trials.”

The standout doublers

Some athletes are entered in multiple events. Below are the top ones with a realistic proposition of qualifying in both.

100m/200m

• Women: Richardson (100m wild card); Twanisha Terry; Melissa Jefferson-Wooden (has 100m world lead of 10.73s).
• Men: Kenny Bednarek; Christian Coleman; Jordan Anthony (NCAA 100m champion); McCallum T’Mars (200m world lead of 19.73 seconds); Kyree King; Courtney Lindsey; Tate Taylor.

1500/5,000m: Cole Hocker (2024 Olympic 1,500m Champion)

5,000m/10,000m:

• Women: Elise Cranny; Karissa Schweizer; Weini Kelati Frezghi.
• Men: Graham Blanks; Nico Young; Grant Fisher (Fisher took bronze over both distances at the Paris Olympics).

Triple jump/long jump: Jasmine Moore. In 2022, she was the first American woman to qualify for both events at a world championships, and last year became only the second athlete to win medals (two bronzes) in both horizontal jumps at an Olympics — a real unicorn.

Shelby Houlihan’s return

For the first time since 2020, when she won national titles over 1,500m and 3,000m indoors, Shelby Houlihan will participate at a U.S. championships. In June 2021, she was banned for four years after testing positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid.

Houlihan has always maintained that the adverse finding came from a contaminated pork burrito — which is why she refused to accept a reduced three-year ban, with a guilty plea, that would have allowed her to return for last summer’s Olympics.

Her appeal to CAS in 2021 was rejected, which meant she missed that year’s Olympic trials.

She first raced again in February, and, in March, she won silver over 3,000m at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China (pictured below). A return to the Diamond League came in June, where she hit the 5,000m entry standard for Tokyo (14:45.29). Now 32, she still holds the 1,500m American record of 3:54.99, set in 2019.

(Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Four other American women have posted quicker 5,000m times than her during the qualifying window, so she will likely need to improve on her Rome performance if she is to qualify. Houlihan, at her best in 2020, was a 14:23 runner.

All eyes on Anna Hall

(Heptathlon, starts 11:00am Thursday, finishes 5:55pm Friday PT)

In June, Anna Hall shocked herself and the world with a massive heptathlon PB of 7,032 in Gotzis, Austria. It made her only the fifth woman to break the 7,000 barrier and moved her up to third all-time.

Injury issues had affected her in the build-up to last summer’s Olympics, dating back to breaking her foot at the 2021 trials. She had knee surgery in January 2024 but still won the national title comfortably and came fifth at the Paris Games.

Hall is bidding to complete the set of world championship medals. She took world bronze three years ago in Eugene as a 21-year-old, then silver in Budapest the following year.

There, Great Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson beat her by the narrowest winning margin at a world championships (by 20 points).

Qualification for Tokyo should be no problem; it is more about the seven performances and the total points. Based on her Gotzis result, Hall is the current gold-medal favorite for worlds.

(Top photo of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone: Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)