TOKYO, Japan (AFP)-US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone ran the second fastest time ever to win gold in the women’s 400 metres at the world championships in Tokyo on Thursday.

The 26-year-old American clocked 47.78sec on a rain-slicked track to smash the previous championship record of 47.99sec set by Jarmila Kratochvilova of then-Czechoslovakia in 1983.

Defending champion and Olympic gold medallist Marileidy Paulino took silver in a Dominican Republic record of 47.98sec, with Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser claiming bronze in 48.19sec.

Having smashed the US record in the semi-final, McLaughlin-Levrone looked set to unleash something big in the final, perhaps even threatening Marita Koch’s 40-year-old world record of 47.60sec.

And so it proved, the two-time 400m hurdles Olympic champion and world record holder laying it all down on the track.

McLaughlin-Levrone was drawn in lane five, outside Cuba’s Roxana Gomez and inside Britain’s Amber Anning.

Temperatures at the National Stadium had dipped from recent sultry conditions as steady rain fell.

But the wet track made no difference as McLaughlin-Levrone motored out of her blocks.

By the halfway mark of the race in front of a raucous crowd, she had already gone past Anning.

A fine curve into the home straight saw the American in the lead.

Paulino briefly looked like she might threaten from the outside lane, but McLaughlin-Levrone, with her eyes glued on the timer, used every sinew in her body to propel herself past the line.

She crossed it in a championship record, but fell agonisingly short of the record set by Koch of then-East Germany in Canberra on October 6, 1985.