Taylor’s strong finish in her preliminary heat, where she ran even with Germany’s Heike Meissner around the final turn for third place and then pulled comfortably ahead down the stretch, came as no surprise to those familiar with her victories at Penn Relays and NCAAs, where she passed Texas’ Angel Patterson on the final hurdle, or her final at U.S. Nationals where she beat favored Michelle Johnson down the stretch to earn the third and final spot on the U.S. National Team.

Those unfamiliar with Taylor, including ABC announcer Carol Lewis—who worried out loud whether Taylor could hold off Meissner—were left in awe with her toughness down the final straightaway. Taylor herself attributed her first sub-56 second race at NCAAs to the improvement in the second half of her race. That newfound ability to finish, according to Haggerty, is what transformed Taylor from a U.S. semifinalist to a World semifinalist in just one year.

“If I were to reduce it to one factor, if that could be done, it would be a sharper focus than what she had before, and what she had before was pretty good,” said Haggerty, who also praised Taylor’s continued training with Associate Head Coach Walter Johnson ’71 and her diligent weightlifting throughout the season.

Taylor’s finish of 56.28 seconds in the preliminaries was a considerable improvement over her dismal 57.95-second performance in her most recent IAAF Grand Prix race in Stockholm on July 17, but still short of the personal record of 55.46 seconds she set at Zagreb on July 2.

“I’ve been having a little trouble the past few races, but I got out here today and knew what I had to do,” Taylor said.

Taylor’s third-place finish meant that she would be forced into one of the unfavorable outside lanes in her semifinal heat on Monday. She drew lane eight.

“Being in lane eight, a lot of people think it’s a bad lane, but being a former 400 hurdler myself, I think it’s one of the best,” Haggerty said. “It’s got a wider turn.”

Taylor placed sixth in the semifinal heat in 56.52 seconds, leaving her short of the top four finishers who qualified for the final. With Romania’s Ionela Tirlea placing fourth at 54.92 seconds, she would have needed to run over a half-second faster than her personal record to make the final.