EUGENE, Ore. — Two steps before reaching the finish line, Sha’Carey Richardson started pounding his chest.
She knew she had won, and anyone who doesn’t think she’s the sprinter to beat at the Paris Olympics this summer should probably think again.
Richardson sprinted 100 meters in 10.71 seconds at the U.S. Track Trials on Saturday, setting the latest record for the “I’m Not Back, I’m Better” tour, becoming the fastest woman in the world this year and earning an official ticket to France, where the women’s race begins on Aug. 2.
The final marked the third time Richardson had not started well in the tournament, and also the third time she had performed well in the tournament.
She was 0.09 seconds ahead of her training partner Melissa Jefferson, the 2022 U.S. champion. Towanisha Terry, another sprinter from coach Dennis Mitchell’s camp, finished third and also earned a spot on the women’s 100-meter team.
“I’m honored,” Richardson said. “I feel like everything I’ve been through in my life has prepared me for this moment.”
Seconds after celebrating after crossing the finish line, she was visibly overcome with emotion and fell to her knees.
“The emotion was just joy because I’ve worked so hard, not just physically on the track, but mentally and emotionally, to develop into the mature young woman that I am now,” she said.
It’s been a trying experience for the 24-year-old Texan: Three years ago, she also won this race (in 10.86 seconds) before being stripped of the win after testing positive for marijuana, exposing everything from her own struggles with depression to anti-doping rules that haven’t changed with the times.
From there, the hard work began, and Richardson said a better, more well-rounded figure emerged who lit up Hayward Field in 2021. With her orange hair flowing, she looked like the sport’s breakout star.
It took nearly two years for her to see results on the track again, but she won the national championships in 2023, declaring, “I’m not back, I’m better,” and backed it up by winning the world title a month later.
“The message I want to give is, no matter what, believe in yourself,” Richardson said, echoing much of the same sentiment he expressed at last year’s meet in Budapest. “You have to stay firm in your belief in yourself. Stay grounded in yourself and your efforts.”
Handing her the gold in Paris is a risky move given the competition she faces: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Sherica Jackson and two-time champion Elaine Thompson-Heller have a combined 19 Olympic medals. Richardson has never competed in an Olympic Games, and all are scheduled to compete at next weekend’s Jamaican trials.
Thompson-Heller’s recent injury has thrown that calculation into disarray, while Fraser-Pryce is a rare sight in 2024 and Jackson is a two-time world champion in the 200. Richardson placed third in the event at the world championships and will compete in next week’s trials.
In the United States, Americans motivated each other, and Mitchell, a big name in sprinting in the 1990s, achieved the rare feat of getting all three of his best sprinters to compete in the Olympics.
“The odds of winning all three are probably 0.0000000000,” Mitchell said, “but these girls didn’t care about the odds. They went out there, made a plan and executed it well. They deserved everything they got.”
It’s hard to argue that Richardson is the favorite to win, considering she had a mediocre start but still managed to pull herself together before the end of the race and still set a season’s best time. Asked if she was thinking about her time heading into the Olympics, she didn’t respond.
“I just know that if I execute and run the race that I’ve been training for, then the time will come,” she said.
