Far Beyond Gold by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, A Book Review

Far Beyond Gold, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2024

ISBN 978-0-7852-9799-4

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has had a stellar career, winning the 400h in 2020 (or 2021!) Olympics and the World Championship in 2022, breaking the world record four times in 2021 and 2022, ultimately running 50.68.  She has also won Olympic and World 4 by 400 relay medals. The age of just 24 makes it pretty young to issue an autobiography. The book reveals a great athlete but quite a complex person.

In the introduction, she writes: “At the heart of this book is a simple question: who is Sydney? Finding the right answer hasn’t always been easy for me. It’s involved years of inner turmoil. Loads of fear. And a whole lot of questions and uncertainty. I’m guessing you can relate to those struggles. All of us want to know who we are, why we are here, and what will make us happy and fulfilled. We want a purpose, a strong sense of identity, and clarity about how we’re supposed to spend our days”.

She adds a purpose for the book: “I want my story to encourage anyone who struggles with fear and anxiety. If God can turn me from fear to faith, I know he can do the same for you”.

Sydney qualified for the 2016 Olympics at the age of 16. It was a phenomenal achievement but one that caused her a lot of anxiety—“I was petrified of the Olympics.” Having only run junior races, where she usually won, she struggled to cope with competing on the world stage with no chance of winning. [She reached the semi-finals and came fifth].

She chose to go to college in Kentucky to be coached by the legendary Coach Flo (Edrick Floréal). At the end of her first year, Coach Flo accepted a job at the University of Texas. In a situation beyond belief to a British reader – regarding the relationships between athlete and coach, Sydney records learning of this in a phone call from Coach Flo, who simply said to her: “We’re going to Texas.”  Flo may have been going to Texas, but Sydney was not! She opted to terminate the relationship with her coach, leave college, and go professional. She comments on this incident in the book: “Still to this day, I struggle to trust people in part because of what happened in college.”

In 2019, she won the Diamond League final, beating Dalilah Muhammed, but in the World Championship a month later, the order…