Sha’Carri Richardson gains redemption at the World Championships
Sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson has attained redemption.
After a series of high and lows on the track; personal struggles; and reported friction with some of her athletic peers, presumably due to her alleged diva-like behavior, the diminutive Richardson is now a giant of her sport, thanks to a stunning upset in the women’s 100-meter finals at the World Athletics Championships on Monday in Budapest, Hungry.
Her victory was shocking not so much because Richardson lacked the necessities to dethrone the Jamaican sprinters who have dominated the women’s 100 and 200 meters for the better part of the past five years. It was unexpected given her struggles in the semifinals.
Richardson, 23, labored to a clocking of 10.84, finishing third in her heat, and advancing to finals only after nervously waiting for confirmation that she had qualified based on her time being among the fastest of those who did not automatically (the top two in each heat) move on.
In the finals, Richardson was faced with an onerous challenge: facing five-time and defending 100-meter World Championships titleist 36-year-old Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce of Jamaica, widely regarded as the greatest women’s sprinter of all-time, and 29-year-old Shericka Jackson, also from Jamaica, the only athlete to ever win medals at the World Championships in 100, 200, and 400 meters.
Nevertheless, staring down the track from the far outside in lane nine, she summoned the inner strength and resilience to run the swiftest 100-meter time in the history of the event, passing Jackson in the closing 20 meters and recording 10.65 to capture the gold. Jackson took second at
10.72 and Fraser-Pryce the bronze at 10.77.
Afterward, Fraser-Pryce and Richardson displayed mutual respect and camaraderie when the eight-time Olympic medalist jokingly remarked, “You know how long the USA [has] not [won] a gold medal?”
Richardson exuberantly and laughingly replied, “Because of you! Because of you!”
Indeed, it was Tori Bowie, who tragically passed away this past May at the age of 32 due to complications related to childbirth, who last won gold for the USA in the 100 meters at the World Championships in 2017.
On July 7 at the U.S. Track and Field Championships at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, Richardson pulled off her bright-orange wig, tossing it behind her and onto the track to unveil long cornrows.
It was a symbolic and cathartic moment for the 5-foot, 1-inch Dallas, Texas, native and Louisiana State University product, whose peaks and valleys trended from a blazing 10.75 seconds at 19 years old in the 2019 NCAA Division I Championships, setting a collegiate record in winning the 100-meter title, to being banned from the 2020 Olympics after testing positive for cannabis after her victory at the U.S. Olympic Trials in July of 2021.
(The 2020 Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo in July and August of 2021—originally scheduled to take place in July and August of 2020, but postponed due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.)
Richardson’s exclusion was a polarizing issue, with hard-core track and field fans and those who had never heard of her before the issue weighing in on whether she should have been disallowed to compete in the sport’s most significant competition for a substance not considered performance-enhancing.
“I wanted to show you guys that I’m still that girl, but I’m better,” Richardson said to a journalist named Tee on the day she discarded the wig. “I’m still that girl, but I’m stronger. I’m still that girl but I’m wiser. I had to shed the old and present the new.”
It came to fruition on Monday in Hungary, 5,700 miles from Hayward field.
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