SAINT-DENIS, France — Masai Russell bolted down the track, legs scissoring gracefully as she cleared the ten hurdles that separated her from the finish line.
The 24-year-old from Maryland lunged across a fraction of a second ahead of French hurdler Cyrena Samba-Mayela. Her margin of victory? One one-hundredth of a second.
There was a moment's delay while the photo finish was analyzed and Russell leapt in the air when her gold-medal win was confirmed. Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico took bronze at the Olympics.
The win bookends a dominant showing for U.S. women hurdlers in Paris. On Thursday, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone smashed her own world record winning gold in the women's 400-meter final.
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