After reflecting on what Natalie Dumas accomplished over the past few days, it struck me that we’re looking at her performance all wrong.
This wasn’t just the greatest high school performance in history.
It was one of the greatest performances ever by any American woman. Not just a high schooler but a collegian, a post-collegiate, a pro. Anybody.
I was trying to figure out a way to put Dumas’s historic triple national championship in perspective, and I kept looking at these three numbers: 55.99, 51.14, 2:00.11.
And I started wondering how many U.S. women of any age on any level had ever run that fast for all three events. So I looked it up.
And the answer is … none.
Dumas is the first and only American woman ever to run 55.99 for the 400-meter hurdles, 51.14 for the 400 and 2:00.11 for the 800 at any point in their life.
And she did it in the span of 48 hours, from early afternoon Friday through early afternoon Sunday.
What she did defies belief. She not only ran top-6 all-time high school times, she won all three events. On top of anchoring Eastern to 2nd place in the sprint medley with the 12th-fastest time in U.S. history.
What’s interesting is that while we think of the 400-800 or the 400-400IH as natural doubles because they are in high school and sometimes in college, where the chase for team points generally determines what events athletes contest, you rarely see those sort of doublers on an elite level because when you’re one of the nation’s leading middle-distance runners or long hurdlers, you have your event and you focus on your event and you rarely if ever run anything else. Because you’re trying to make a living, not pile up team points. When team points are no longer a factor, specialization takes over.
So what Dumas achieved over the weekend is truly unique not just on a scholastic scale but on a national scale.
Dumas isn’t just top-10 all-time in all three of her individual events, she’s No. 14 among U.S. women this year in the 400, No. 17 in the 800 and No. 17 in the intermediates.
On the all-time U.S. list, she’s No. 115 in the 400, No. 96 in the 800 and No. 109 in the 400 hurdles.
So here’s how I spent Sunday night and Monday morning: Going through the all-time U.S. lists to see if anybody showed up all three lists.
I started out cross checking the 400 hurdles and 800 lists because I figured that would be the rarest double out of the three, and there isn’t one other U.S. citizen that’s ever run as fast as 55.99 and 2:00.11. So that immediately guaranteed she’s the only one to run as fast in all three events,
But I wanted to see how common the other doubles were as well so I kept cross checking.
Next I went to the 400-800 double and found only two women who have run as fast as Dumas in both. One is Trenton’s Athing Mu, the 2021 Olympic 800 gold medalist. She has PRs of 49.57 and 1:54.97. The other is Jearl Mills Clark, a three-time Olympian, 4-by-4 silver medalist in Barcelona in 1992 and 4-by-4 gold medalist in 1996 in Atlanta and 2000 in Sydney. She ran 49.40 and 1:56.40. Of course, neither one ran the intermediates.
Not surprisingly, the most common double is the 400 and 400-meter hurdles. You need world-class 400 speed to be an elite 400-meter hurdler. Still, there are only 10 other U.S. women who have run 55.99 and 51.14.
Sydney McLaughlin, the four-time gold medalist from Scotch Plains, has run 48.74 and a world-record 50.37 and she could probably jog a 1:57 if she wanted to 800. But she hasn’t yet!
Here’s the full list of 400-400IH doubles:
Shae Anderson [50.84 2021 / 55.21 2021]
Kim Batten [50.61 1998 / 52.61 1995]
Jaide Stepter Baynes [50.63 2018 / 54.95 2016]
Natalie Dumas [51.14 2025 / 55.99 2025]
Anna Hall [50.82 2023 / 54.42 2023]
Shamier Little [49.68 2023 / 52.39 2021]
Sydney McLaughlin [48.74 2023 / 50.37 2024]
Dalilah Muhammad [50.60 2019 / 51.58 2021]
Ashley Spencer [50.28 2013 / 53.11 2017
Britton Wilson [49.13 2023 / 53.08 2022]
Linetta Wilson, [51.02 1989 / 55.38 1986]
How many women world-wide have achieved a 51.14 / 55.99 / 2:00.11 triple in their lives? It would take weeks to look that one up.
But I did check the 100 fastest non-American 400-meter hurdlers on the all-time world list and not one of them ever ran 2:00.11 in the 800. The closest was Germany’s Heike Meissner, who ran 54.03 at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and 1:59.74 in Stuttgart in 1998 but never ran faster than 52.66 in the 400 – that was in Charlotte in 1996.
I’ll keep looking. Because the more we learn about other athletes throughout history, the more we realize just how remarkable and unique Dumas’s three days at Franklin Field were.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 