TOKYO: Early starts, false starts, none of it bothered the world's top two hurdlers in their debuts at the Tokyo Olympics.
World-record holder Sydney McLaughlin and reigning world champion Dalilah Muhammad breezed through their opening rounds of the 400-meter hurdles Saturday morning, keeping their much-anticipated showdown on track for a gold-medal race next week.
McLaughlin was about 10 paces down the track in her heat when a second gun went off, signaling a false start in her race.
Mariya Mykolenko of Ukraine was shown a yellow card, and given a warning.
This might have felt like a recurring bad dream for McLaughlin.
At U.S. Olympic trials last month, her qualifying race was called back to the starting line three times because of what appeared to be a faulty sensor in the starting blocks.
Not a problem.
Just as she did at the trials in Eugene, Oregon, she crouched into the blocks again and cruised around the oval for the win.
"It's always an adjustment, just mentally, having to refocus and regroup," McLaughlin said.
"Its just one of those things. You can't always control what happens, but mentally you can control how you respond to it."
McLaughlin said she was up at 4 a.m. to get ready for a 9:15 race, an unusually early starting time for most runners, and one made more difficult by the fact that they've only been in Japan for a week.
There's a 16-hour time difference from McLaughlin's home base in California.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so you just have to be ready," she said.
Muhammad was, too.
She won her heat easily, and said her own 5 a.m. wake-up call was just part of the job.
"I'm more worried about the one at 8, than the one at 5," she said, referring to the wake-up time for next Wednesday's final, which is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. in Tokyo.
There's also a semifinal on Monday, but it's in the evening.
McLaughlin's first-round time of 54.65 seconds and Muhammad's time of 53.97 were essentially jogs in a race that figures to get faster each time they line up.
McLaughlin holds the world record at 51.90.
Muhammad set the world record the previous two times they met in big races, world and U.S.championships, in 2019.
A day after the women's 100-meter sprinters ran faster-than-expected times, both hurdlers said they, too, had a feeling Tokyo was a fast track.
Would it take another world record to leave here with a gold medal? "I think anything is possible," McLaughlin said.
The sprinters were set to test that theory later Saturday.
Jamaican teammates Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah, and Marie-Josée Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast all ran under 10.85 in the first round Friday and were pointing toward what was shaping up as a blazing-fast final.
Missing from the lineup will be Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria.
The much-decorated sprinter and long jumper woke up Saturday to the news that she'd been suspended for a positive test for human growth hormone.
It was the latest in a string of bad news for the African country.
Earlier in the week, testing authorities announced 10 Nigerians had been declared ineligible for the Olympic track meet because of insufficient testing in the lead-up to the Games.