Olympic Champion Dalilah Muhammad's Final Race This Weekend

Olympic champion Dalilah Muhammad is hanging up her spikes after one final race, and she's doing it at a championship that celebrates everything she helped build in track and field.

The 36-year-old will compete in the 400m hurdles at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest this weekend. The semifinals are Saturday, with the final on Sunday.

Muhammad's career reads like a highlight reel. She won Olympic gold in 2016 when making the team seemed like a long shot. She captured a world title in 2019 and broke a world record that had stood for years.

"The gold was so far from my mind; that definitely wasn't the goal going into 2016," she told Lewis Johnson. "I just wanted to make it as a 400m hurdler."

The Ultimate Championship, making its debut this year, brings together Olympic champions and world title holders for three days of competition. The winner of each event takes home $150,000, part of a $10 million prize pot that's the richest in track and field history.

Muhammad delayed retirement to be part of this moment. "One of the reasons that kept me coming back this year was for the Ultimate Championship," she said. "I love to see our sport growing and doing so much more, and I think a big part of me really wanted to be part of that."

The Ripple Effect

Muhammad's impact extends far beyond her medals. After she missed the Olympic team in 2024, Anna Cockrell used her post-race interview to honor her mentor.

"You revolutionized this event," Cockrell said. "The impact you've had on the sport goes beyond medals, goes beyond records. Your grace, your poise, your competition, your mentorship of me. I can't say thank you to D enough."

Even Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who beat Muhammad at the Tokyo Games, credits her for raising the bar. "Dalilah, you truly did just change the game for all of us," she said in 2025. "I think just seeing you break that world record after so long of it being there, it inspired all of us."

Muhammad ranks fifth in the world this year with a time of 53.16 seconds. The community center in Queens, New York, where her journey began will be watching as she takes the track one last time in a sport she helped transform.