RIO DE JANEIRO – Three American sprint hurdlers passed the finish line Wednesday night at the Olympic Stadium, heaving themselves forward the way that sprint hurdlers do, trying to squeeze a hundredth of a second from the clock or to slip past an opponent in the final strides. They pulled up at the end of the track, chests heaving from the effort, and stared upward, waiting for the scoreboard to illuminate their times and places and to freeze them in cold finality.
Brianna Rollins knew that she had won the gold medal in the race, the final of the 100-meter hurdles.