As Masai Russell won and won and won early this season, and broke meet record after meet record, she and Lonnie Greene, her coach since 2018, developed a tactic to deal with the mounting world record talk.
“Race to win,” Greene repeated to the 2024 Olympic gold medalist before races starting in July. “Time will take care of itself.”
They stuck to that mindset on a warm Thursday night in Zurich, Switzerland, two weeks ago.
“I put the world record out of my head,” Russell said.
She fixated on the 10 hurdles in front of her in lane five. Greene watched. The gun went off. By Russell’s third of eight strides before the first hurdle, the man with 35 years of college coaching experience said, “That’s it.”
In a phone interview a week after the race, Greene recalled Nigerian Tobi Amusan, the world record holder since 2022, challenging Russell’s lead at the eighth hurdle.
“Masai responds,” Greene said. “She reacts to challenges, if that makes any sense, and she just gets faster.”
Three seconds later, Russell leaned textbook over the finish line, raised her right arm into the air and pointed her index finger before coming to a stop on the curve.
She ran 12.09 seconds with no aiding tailwind, breaking Amusan’s world record of 12.12.
“I didn’t feel like the hurdles were coming up in a way where I couldn’t control it,” Russell said a week later. “So I do think that there’s a little more in there (to run faster). My coach is like, ‘I think that there’s still some more in there.’”
Greene added, “The way she executed the race, to this day, was almost flawless. In my humble opinion, I think she’s still got a tenth and a half (faster) in her this season if the stars align again.”
They may again on Friday in Budapest.
Russell headlines the first of three nights of the first World Athletics Ultimate Championship, a best-of-the-best gathering of Olympic gold medalists, world champions and the other highest-ranked track and field athletes.
Fields are limited, so there are no preliminary rounds. Races 800m and shorter, including Friday’s 100m hurdles, have strictly semifinals and finals.
Russell, who commuted 50 minutes each way for four years from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, to the Bullis School in Potomac, began racing the 100m hurdles as a high school senior.
She won the state title in her fourth race ever in the event, according to Track and Field News and track statistics database Tilastopaja.org.
At the University of Kentucky, Russell ran both the 100m hurdles and the 400m hurdles to maximize points for the team.
“She was very diligent about that,” Greene said. “She didn’t bat an eye. She said, ‘Coach, when the NCAA is over, I am done in the 400m hurdles.’ I said, ‘OK.’”
“My motivation to be good at the 100m hurdles was to not hurt as bad as I do in practice for the 400m hurdles,” she said, according to Track and Field News.
In 2023, Russell finished her college career. In 2024, she won the Olympic Trials 100m hurdles in 12.25 seconds, a personal best by a tenth.
That’s when Greene told her for the first time that she had the capacity to break the world record (though Russell already had that as one of her written goals to start 2024).
After her Olympic gold, Russell got closer in 2025. She ran 12.17 in May and 12.19 in August. But at the biennial World Championships last September, she was fourth.
“When she didn’t make the podium, we came to the conclusion that’s why it’s called competition,” Greene said. “At any given moment, anybody can be beaten.”
That hasn’t happened to Russell since the 2025 Worlds: 12 wins in 12 meets, including 11 in 2026.
If she prevails on Friday, then again at the Athlos event in London on Sept. 18, she will own the longest 100m hurdles win streak since Michelle Perry’s 14 meets in a row in 2006 and 2007.
Before Russell accomplished anything in the sport, she repeatedly asked friends if they’d prefer an Olympic gold medal or a world record. The answers were mixed.
Russell chose the gold medal, because unlike the record, somebody else can’t snatch it.
“Both right now feel really, really good, but I am glad that I did win the Olympic gold in 2024, and I’m blessed to be here now,” she said. “Now it’s like, all right, world champion now. It’s always something next.”
