Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is the 2024 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year
READ MORE
2024 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year
The Lexington Herald-Leader revealed the winner of its 44th annual Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year award on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Click below to read more about the winner of the 2024 honor, view the complete voting totals and see reaction from the media members who contributed to the balloting.
Expand All
Watch: Lexington Herald-Leader reveals 2024 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year award winner
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is the 2024 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year
Top 10: Nick Mingione edges Travis Perry for second in Kentucky Sports Figure award voting
See all 80 people, 3 horses who received votes for 2024 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year
From ZaKiyah Johnson to Trent Noah, what KY Sports Figure voters said about finishers 11-25
From the moment Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone made the 2016 U.S. Olympic track and field team as a high schooler, she has been shattering barriers.
So it is fitting that the former Kentucky Wildcats hurdler’s victory in the 2024 Lexington Herald-Leader Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year voting came in unprecedented fashion.
After setting a world record in the 400-meter hurdles and winning two Olympic gold medals last summer in Paris, McLaughlin-Levrone has been elected the 44th winner of the Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year Award in voting by 138 sports media members from across the state.
McLaughlin-Levrone is the eighth professional athlete to earn Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year honors. However, the product of Dunellen, New Jersey, is the first pro athlete who did not grow up in the commonwealth to win the award.
She is also the first one-and-done college athlete to win Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year honors after having turned professional and left the state.
“I’m not sure if we’ve seen any Wildcat show as much dominance as (McLaughlin-Levrone) has,” wrote Colby Wilson of WDKY-TV. “... she continues to be the best at what she does by a long shot.”
The third female to win the Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year award, McLaughlin-Levrone joins Olympics swimming gold medalist Mary T. Meagher (1984) and NCAA gymnastics all-around champion Jenny Hansen (1994).
“Sydney dominated the Paris Olympics and is set up to do it for years to come,” wrote James Streble of Louisville’s WHBE-AM 680. “Out of all the athletes that we have seen come out of the University of Kentucky, she may end up being the best and most decorated.”
Nick Mingione, who coached the Kentucky Wildcats to baseball’s College World Series for the first time in school history, finished second in Sports Figure of the Year voting.
“Mingione combined a daring style of play with boundless enthusiasm and optimism to orchestrate a ride that many had thought to be almost impossible for Kentucky baseball,” wrote John Herndon, the retired sports editor at The Anderson News in Lawrenceburg.
While McLaughlin-Levrone’s margin of victory in Sports Figure voting was a robust 351 points, Mingione’s edge over former Lyon County High School boys basketball star Travis Perry for the runner-up position was a scant two points.
The 2023 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year victor, Perry was seeking to be the first back-to-back winner of the award since Roy Kidd, the iconic former Eastern Kentucky University football coach, won in 1981 and 1982.
After becoming the all-time leading scorer in Kentucky boys high school hoops history as a junior, Perry as a senior led Lyon County, a Class A-sized school, to the state championship.
“It is hard to fully describe the level of pride and excitement (Perry) brought to the western part of the state, which often feels neglected or forgotten when people cover or talk about high school basketball in Kentucky,” wrote Brian York of Mayfield’s WLLE-FM 102.1.
Kenny McPeek, the Lexington thoroughbred horse trainer who won both the Kentucky Oaks (Thorpedo Anna) and Kentucky Derby (Mystik Dan), and Lee Kiefer, the Lexington foil fencer who won two Olympic gold medals, rounded out the top five in the voting.
McLaughlin-Levrone’s stellar 2024 included her twice breaking her own world record in her specialty, the 400-meter hurdles. She ran a :50.65 in winning the U.S. Olympic Trials last June. She trumped that at the Olympics in August by running :50.37.
Over her career, McLaughlin-Levrone has now broken the world record in the 400-meter hurdles six times, lowering the mark from :51.9 (her first world record set in 2021) to :50.37.
As a 400-meter hurdler, McLaughlin-Levrone is “consistently the best at what she does, and what she does just happens to be among the most difficult feats in human athletic competition,” wrote Josh Moore, a freelance sportswriter based in Lexington.
At the Olympics, McLaughlin-Levrone also played a starring role in earning a relay gold medal for Team USA.
In the 4-by-400-meter relay finals, she ran a scalding :47.71 second leg, which helped the American quartet — which also included another former Kentucky Wildcat, Alexis Holmes — post the second-fasted time, 3:15.27, in world history.
Three years earlier, in the Tokyo Summer Olympics, McLaughlin-Levrone had earned gold medals in the same two events.
For her 2024 success, McLaughlin-Levrone was named the World Female Track Athlete of the Year.
International stardom seemed to be McLaughlin-Levrone’s destiny during the one season, 2017-18, in which she ran for the University of Kentucky.
As a Wildcat, she won the outdoor NCAA championship in the 400-meter hurdles by almost two seconds while running in a hail storm. She had previously set a collegiate record (:52.75) in the 400 hurdles while winning the SEC championship.
Last September, McLaughlin-Levrone, 25, returned to Lexington to be inducted into the UK Athletics Hall of Fame.
After her most recent Olympics triumphs, McLaughlin-Levrone is “an absolute superstar on the world stage,” wrote Jeff Nations of the Bowling Green Daily News.
Added Steve Bertram of Danville’s WHIR-AM 1230: “Sydney brought more notoriety to the University of Kentucky in Paris than six commercials during the Super Bowl would have.”
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is the 2024 Lexington Herald-Leader Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year.
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 9:06 AM.
