SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — There were small signs for anyone willing to look that the sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson might not quite match the person she has become.
The wobbly starts. The little details. The meek exit from the Olympic trials earlier this summer after such a promising start.
All the hype aside, Richardson was never a sure thing to win an Olympic gold medal Saturday in the 100 meters. On a rainy and odd evening at the Stade de France, 23-year-old Julien Alfred from St. Lucia showed there’s more than one inspirational story, and more than one great sprinter, at this Olympic track meet.
Alfred romped through the puddles and past Richardson and the rest of a largely depleted field, finishing in 10.72 seconds to throw a brick wall in front of what was supposed to be one of the best stories in Paris.
She beat Richardson by .15 seconds — the biggest margin in the Olympic 100 since 2008 — to bring home the first medal of any color to the small eastern Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
Alfred’s victory completed a journey that included her father’s death in 2013 and a move to Jamaica as a teenager, alone, in hopes of training to become a great sprinter.
“He believed I could do it,” Alfred said, crying as she talked about her dad. “He couldn’t get to see me on the biggest stage of my career.”
Richardson was left with silver — a nice color but certainly not the point of all this after what she’s been through the last three years. Her training partner, Melissa Jefferson, finished third in 10.92 seconds.
Richardson came in as the favorite even though she has hardly been flawless this summer.
Her opening race on the road to Paris included a terrible start at Olympic trials in an event she won with an untied shoelace.
Those starts got marginally better, but after she won the U.S. title in the 100, it was a bit of a shock when she failed to qualify for the 200, thus denying herself a chance at double gold in Paris.
On the gold-medal day in the 100, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce abruptly withdrew from the event before the semifinal, leaving all three Jamaicans who swept the podium at the Tokyo Games on the sideline for what, at one point, had been billed as the marquee race of the Olympics.
All of which seemed to set up perfectly for Richardson — only when she lined up in the semifinal, she was right next to Alfred, the only other woman in the Olympic field to crack 10.8 this year.
Richardson lumbered out of the blocks and lost that race by .05 seconds. It was a harbinger of things to come, though Alfred said she barely noticed who was in the lane next to her — it was Richardson again — when the final rolled around 90 minutes later.
“Sometimes when I do, I tend to panic,” Alfred said. “So far this year (not paying attention) has been such a good strategy.“
Neither the specter of Richardson on her right again nor the downpour that started about 10 minutes before the race began could slow down Alfred in the final.
Alfred’s opening burst played big when she won the world indoor title earlier this year at 60 meters, and she started strong in this one, with two steps on the entire field at the 40-meter mark. Richardson, as has happened before this summer, labored to get to full speed.
The American, her arms pumping wide in Lane 7, looked to be making up a bit of ground when Alfred leaned into the finish line. But there was too big a gap between them, and the real contest was the one between Richardson and Jefferson for second.
“I’m a baby in this sport,” said the 23-year-old Jefferson, who won the 2022 U.S. title while Richardson was still fashioning her comeback. “I have a lot of learning and growth to do.“
A centerpiece of NBC’s pre-Games’ coverage and the star of a Netflix documentary about track, Richardson did not show up for interviews after her second-place finish. It was a rarely seen breach of Olympic protocol and a move destined to keep the world guessing about a star who has stayed very much on message since her luck started changing this time last year.
In the few interviews she did in the leadup to the Games, she leaned into personal growth, and how she had become a more thoughtful, mindful person since her lowest point in 2021, shortly after she learned of the death of her biological mother.
That triggered a bout with depression, which left her alone in her hotel room in 2021 at Olympic trials, which is where she said she used marijuana. That cost her the trip to Tokyo. It took two years for her to climb back to the pinnacle, and it turns out, the high point came last year at worlds in Hungary, when she won the 100-meter title.
Given where she was at the last Olympics, a silver medal at these ones, with a chance for more next week in the 4×100 relays, isn’t bad.
But hardly anyone had her playing second fiddle to the sprinter from St. Lucia.
Alfred said on race days, she usually wakes up early on to jot down thoughts in her journal.
On Saturday, she kept it simple. “I wrote down ‘Julien Alfred: Olympic champion,’” she said.
Short. Simple. And 100% on target, a lot like the race she ran to become one.
