SAINT-DENIS, France >> At the end of nine glorious days and nights in which they left the rest of the world behind, America’s golden girls — Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas — led teammates Shamier Little and Alexis Holmes on one final lap of honor around Stade de France on Saturday night.

As the quartet jogged through their encore, a cool breeze lifted up the American flags that draped them as if they were wings.

On a final night of the Olympic Games track and field competition when Kenyan miler Faith Kipyegon and Team USA’s men’s 4x400 relay made Olympic history and Grant Fisher became the first U.S. distance runner ever to medal in two events in the same Games, McLaughlin-Levrone, Thomas, Little and Holmes soared to a place no women had been, even dared to think about, since the sport’s dark period of state sponsored systemic doping before the Iron Curtain came tumbling down.

With an American record shattering time of 3 minutes, 15.27 seconds Team USA just missed breaking the world record of 3:15.17 set by the Soviet Union at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, a mark that has lingered in the record books, in need of an asterik in the minds of many, for 36 years seemingly untouchable.

Until now.

The U.S. women’s triumph was a three-minute reminder to a stunned stadium of how a generation of women, led first and foremost McLaughlin-Levrone, have forced the sport to rethink records and barriers long considered unapproachable.

The lasting legacy of these Games will not be how fast McLaughlin-Levrone and Co. have run or how high they’ve jumped but how they changed minds.

“This generation of track and field is on a different level,” McLaughin-Levrone said. “Everything is improving: including us, the technique and how we prepare. I don’t think anything is impossible at this point, and we continue to prove that every time we step on the track.”

McLaughlin-Levrone have been joined in defying the impossible by Kipyegon, Ukranian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh, Swedish pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis and U.S. shot putter Ryan Crouser, all who in recent years have smashed decades- old world records and mind blowing barriers.

Saturday night was another record-setting night for Kipyegon as she won the 1,500 in an Olympic record 3:51.29 for her third gold medal in the event joining Crouser and Belgian heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam as three-peating at the Paris Games.

“It’s a big, big achievement. I was really looking forward to defending my title (from Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020), and I had a dream,” Kipyegaon said. “Amazing to me, I completed it. I’m so, so happy.”

Like McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400 hurdles, Kipyegon has forced her competitors to raise their games. The next three runners behind her, Australia’s Jessica Hull (3:52.56), Great Britain’s Georgia Bell (3:52.61) and Diribe Welteji of Ethiopia (3:53.11) were also under Kipyegon’s previous Olympic record from Tokyo.

No one, however, has done more to raise the sport’s standards than McLaughlin-Levrone.

Thursday she set her sixth world record in the past three years, defending her 400 hurdles gold medal in 50.37 seconds. In an event where the world record sat at 52.35 from August 2003 to July 2019, McLaughin-Levrone has smashed through the 52 and 51 second barriers and is now on the verge of breaking 50 seconds as well.

Saturday another sold-out crowd wondered what she would do on a flat 400 in the relay.

By the time McLaughlin-Levrone and her teammates took the track for the grand finale it had already been a big night for Team USA.

Masai Russell won a 100-meter hurdle final in which the first three runners finished within three-hundredths of a second within each other: Russell at 12.33 just ahead of France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela (12.34) and Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, the defending Olympic champion (12.36).

American Shelby McEwen finished deadlocked for first with New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr at the end of the high jump only to have Kerr win the gold medal in the second round of a jump off.

Fisher, with a late kick, duplicated his 10,000-meter bronze medal finish earlier in the Games with a 5,000 bronze at 13:15.13 to become the first American to medal in both events in the same Olympics.

Rai Benjamin, winner of the 400 hurdles Friday night, held off Botswana’s Leslie Tebogo, the new Olympic 200 champion, in the 4x400 relay to give a U.S. squad running without injured 400 gold medalist Quincy Hall an Olympic record 2:54.43.