At Paris Olympics 2024, world champion Sha'Carri Richardson could become the first American woman to win 100 m gold since Gail Devers in 1996.
Last year in Budapest, Sha'Carri Richardson won her first 100 m world title. The 24-year-old Texan, who appeared calm and totally focused on her sporting objectives, also seemed to have turned a corner mentally. Her confidence radiated with each lap, and her media appearances conveyed the image of a champion who has succeeded in ridding herself of the superfluous.
A prodigy from her university days, promised a great future before the age of 20, the American was also much in the news for her looks (wigs, huge nails, highly original outfits) and often appeared to be at war with the world. In 2021, just after winning the US Trials in Eugene (Oregon), she was barred from the Tokyo Olympics because of a positive test for cannabis, smoked to alleviate her grief, after learning of the death of her biological mother.
The months that followed were difficult, both on a sporting and a personal level, and the sprinter was widely criticized as being out of control. But since last year, the Texan has changed her face, both on and off the track. " I'm not back, I'm better", she repeated like a mantra before and then after her Budapest title.
Indeed, a rare athlete known to the general public in the United States, which only takes an interest in track and field every four years during the Olympic Games, Richardson has matured, and in recent months sponsors and the American media, notably NBC, have been snapping her up, and not just because she's now a world champion.
"Her personality and results mean that she's already more in demand and popular than Carl Lewis or Michael Johnson were in their day," explained her agent, the highly experienced Californian lawyer Emanuel Hudson, at the Eugene Trials in June. And she's only 24... We have to control her schedule, I had to institute the blackout at one point this year because she needed to concentrate on training."
Who are the women's 100-meter stars at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games?
In Oregon, she won the 100 m ahead of her training partners Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha Terry, much to the delight of their coach Dennis Mitchell, a former sprinter suspended for doping. On the purple track of the Stade de France, where she won her heat this Friday morning in 10'94 without forcing herself, Sha'Carri Richardson is the obvious favorite for the Olympic title. This would be the first women's 100 m title for her country since Gail Devers won it in Atlanta in 1996, since Marion Jones' title in 2000 was taken away from her in 2007 after she confessed to doping.
Who can worry her?
Aside from her compatriots, and given the withdrawals of Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah (winner in 2016 and 2021) and Shericka Jackson (who is reserving her place for the 200 m), the threat will also come from legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (37). On Friday, "Mummy Rocket" was rather reassuring in her heat (10'92), beaten by Ivorian Marie-Josée Ta Lou-Smith (10'87), another choice outsider. And let's not forget to mention this winter's 60 m world champion, Julien Alfred. The Saint Lucia sprinter is on the up, and looked good in her heats (10'95) despite an unfavorable wind (-0.8 m/s).
After a slow start to the season, Richardson reassured those around her and observers a little over a month ago, setting the best time of the year (10''71) in Eugene. She will still have to watch out for her only weakness, her starts, where she sometimes stumbles on her first supports, as she did in June during the Trials at Hayward Field. But she seems to have a strong psychological advantage over the competition.
(L'Équipe)
