Master Closer Masai Russell Is Far From Finished

BEING A CLOSER in track & field’s equal-shortest — and most unforgiving — race is not for the faint of heart. Masai Russell leans into it. Literally.

The 24-year-old won the 100 hurdles at the Paris Olympic Games by 0.01 with a superb lean at the finish. Then in her first major meet of ’25, Russell captured what she considers her first pro win at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, winning the 60H by the same margin with a similar surge.

Six days later at the Millrose Games, Russell put an excellent start together with her usual finish to post a world-leading 7.76.

“I can feel it in the race when my speed is just, like, unleashing,” the Washington, D.C., native says. “It’s allowing my body to run fast the way that it wants to run. The further I get down the track, the more I’m able to open up. It’s just like, ‘All right. This is where it happens.’ And then I just start passing people.”

However, at Russell’s first World Championships in Budapest in ’23, there was no chance to unleash. After hitting the second hurdle in the 100H semifinals, she couldn’t regain her momentum. Midway down the track, Russell toppled a hurdle and stopped.

“It’s a part of the game. Things happen, upsets happen, failure happens,” Russell said afterwards in a YouTube video message to her fans. “It’s always a lesson that I can learn from.”

Russell, who set Collegiate Records in ’23 in the 60H (7.75) and 100H (12.36) — also vowed that the next season would be “one for the books.”

“If you’re not following this journey now, I cannot be more serious to y’all,” she said. “I am very goofy and I play a lot, but this season that’s coming up is going to be one to watch. Everything mentally, physically, nutritionally, spiritually is going to be different.”

Alas, ‘24 didn’t start off that well, but remember, Russell is a closer.

“It was just a lot of overthinking, a lot of doubt,” she says. “I was unsponsored. I was thinking of all the other things that weren’t that important, and that’s what kind of affected my mind when it came to competing and it came to running fast… It started to be like a downhill spiral.”

Russell said she was overthinking her start as well as overthinking what people thought of her because she didn’t have a sponsor. She had an…