Dalilah Muhammad, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist and former world record holder in the 400m hurdles, believes this will be her final season on the track.
"It's going to be it for me this year. I think this will be it," she said Thursday on the eve of the debut of Grand Slam Track in Kingston, Jamaica (Friday, 6 p.m. ET, Peacock). "I haven't really made an announcement or publicly known, but yeah, I'm thinking one and done."
Muhammad, 35, previously said in 2023 and 2024 that she would race her last Olympic Trials in 2024 but didn't know how far into the 2028 Olympic cycle she would go before retiring.
Muhammad, who grew up in Jamaica, Queens, in New York City, finished fifth in the 400m hurdles at her last NCAA Championships for USC In 2012. Twenty days later, she was sixth in her first-round heat at the Olympic Trials.
She stayed in the sport, unsponsored, and in Los Angeles, financially supported by her parents. Mom Nadirah worked as a child protection specialist. Father Askia served as a Muslim Chaplain for the New York City Department of Correction and an adjunct professor of Islamic Studies at the New York Theological Seminary.
In 2013, she raced her first Diamond League meet while wearing shorts and a tank top that she bought on clearance at Ross Dress for Less.
Over that season, Muhammad lowered her personal best time in the 400m hurdles from 56.04 to 53.83 and won the U.S. title. Then she earned silver at the 2013 World Championships, picking up a Nike sponsorship along with it.
She went to the 2016 Olympics owning the fastest time in the world for the year by 1.08 seconds over her next-closest competitor in Rio. She lived up to overwhelming favorite status, winning by a comfortable 42 hundredths.
“The gold was so far from my mind; that definitely wasn’t the goal going into 2016,” she said. “I just wanted to make it as a 400m hurdler.”
Then in 2019, Muhammad broke a nearly 16-year-old world record in the event, running 52.20 at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships. Two months later, she lowered the record again — to 52.16 — to win the world title.
She took silver at the Tokyo Games behind countrywoman Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Both went under the existing world record.
Muhammad is currently the third-fastest woman in history behind McLaughlin-Levrone and Femke Bol of the Netherlands.
"At a young age, you never know where it's going to take you," Muhammad said Thursday. "I think I just always had that little something that I just wanted to keep going. I wanted to push those boundaries and push forward."
Muhammad was challenged by injury in the Paris Olympic cycle. She placed sixth at the 2024 Olympic Trials. Anna Cockrell, runner-up at trials and silver medalist in Paris, used her post-race TV interview to praise Muhammad.
"You revolutionized this event," she said. "The impact you've had on the sport goes beyond medals, goes beyond records. Your grace, your poise, your competition, your mentorship of me. I can't say thank you to D enough."
On Thursday, McLaughlin-Levrone echoed that while sitting next to Muhammad.
"Dalilah, you truly did just change the ...
