MOMENTS AFTER PREVAILING over an exceptionally deep 100H field at the ’24 Olympic Trials, Masai Russell was already thinking ahead to her next goal. “I ran 12.8 like a couple weeks ago and now I’m talking about breaking the Olympic Trials meet record,” the Kentucky alum said upon clocking 12.25 (then No. 5 on the world all-time list). “It just shows that I’m capable of breaking the World Record. I believe that I can respectfully touch the World Record — I don’t know when, I don’t know where.”
Nearly 2 years later, the World Record remains safe, but Russell has continued to close in on the 12.12 that Nigerian Tobi Amusan clocked in the heats of the ’22 World Championships. At this year’s Xiamen DL on May 23, she came within 0.02, winning in a sensational American record of 12.14.
“I’ve been saying all year that I’m gonna break the World Record,” she noted after that race. “I think once we back off [heavy training] and get into championship season we’ll see some even crazier times, which is crazy to say. But I just want to take it meet by meet and not think too far ahead, stay where I’m at and really just compete… With the right pressure and the right day I don’t know what time will come up.”
Of course, Russell’s list of achievements already includes something more valuable than a World Record. The Upper Marlboro, Maryland, native used a perfectly timed lean at the line to take the Olympic gold medal two years ago in Paris over France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela.
And while she has struggled to find consistency since the Olympics, Russell has remained solidly in the event’s upper echelon. She proved that her performance at Stade de France was no fluke when she blitzed her first American Record in May ’25 with a dazzling 12.17 at the Grand Slam Track stop in Florida. She backed that up with a 12.19 to win the DL race in Chorzów, Poland, in August.
Russell won U.S. titles both indoors and outdoors and in ’25, the latter in a meet record 12.22. In September at the World Championships in Tokyo she hit the fifth hurdle, disrupting her momentum. She maintained her composure and closed well but finished a frustrating 4th. It was, she admitted, part of a season where she had to adjust to being in the spotlight.
“I kind of struggled with some doubt coming from being the Olympic champion and trying to prove to everybody else who I was, rather than just operating in the realm of who I know that I am,” she said before the Xiamen race while looking back at her ’25 season. “So I think that now I know who I am, I know what I want to accomplish, I know where I’m going, and I know the things that I can do.”
Initially a 400H specialist, Russell twice medaled in the event at the Pan-Am U20 Championships. And though she never won an NCAA title while competing for Kentucky, she scored in both hurdles at three consecutive NCAAs from ’21 to ’23. She sported an impressive 54.66 PR in the longer race (to finish 2nd at the ’23 NCAA), but her results in the 100H began to improve substantially (including a 12.36 CR at the Texas Relays as a senior) and following graduation she started focusing exclusively on that event. She placed 3rd at USATF that summer and earned a spot on the WC team in Budapest, where she would unfortunately fall and DNF in the semifinals.
Russell has stayed in Lexington, Kentucky, where she trains under her college coach, Lonnie Greene, alongside three-time world indoor 60H champion Devynne Charlton of the Bahamas and ’21 Olympic bronze medalist Megan Simmonds of Jamaica.
“Devynne has an amazing 60 and I have an amazing 100H, so it works hand in hand for me to continue to work on my start and for her to work on her finish,” Russell said in Xiamen. “Honestly, if it wasn’t for them, I don’t even know if I’d be running the times that I’m running because we line it up in practice every day.”
As she heads into the heart of the season, Russell, who turns 26 on June 17, said she feels that finding consistency is helping her close in on the WR. “I won the Olympics my first year as a pro, so I was learning in front of the world,” she said. “We’re just seeing me learning the professional space more, me being comfortable without my coach being here [at an international meet], me knowing what to do, what not to do. It’s all a learning experience. We’re seeing the whole puzzle come together.”
