It’s pouring rain in Paris and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is not at the starting blocks for the 100m final. Reasons for gloom on the lavender-violet track mottled with dark by the heavy raindrops of the storm.
Only a very strong emotion can compensate for the absence of the 37-year-old Jamaican rocket mom, Olympic champion in Beijing 2008 and Beijing 2012, and still a medalist in 2016 and 2021. That emotion is Sha’Carri Richardson, exclaim the Americans, fascinated by the life and extravagant personality of the Texan sprinter who reminds them so much of Florence Griffith, who as Liza Minelli in Cabaret would show her nails to whoever and say, “sophisticated, huh?” Richardson has the nails, and sophistication, and the poise necessary to warn before the race: “It’s the last time the Games are held without Sha’Carri Richardson, and it’s the last time the United States returns without the gold medal in the 100 meters.”
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He may be right about the first point, but the United States will have to continue waiting for the heir to Gail Devers, Olympic champion in Atlanta 96.
Athletics is the only sport in which a gold medal can be won by an athlete from a country that no one even knew existed, and Saint Lucia, with 200,000 inhabitants and where Julien Alfred was born, is one of those countries. The Caribbean sprinter scared Sha’Carri Richardson, the goddess of speed, in a semi-final in which the Texan, who despises the art of the heel start, stumbled in the first steps and a dynamic action from the middle of the race, far superior to the rest, was of no use to her. Her prodigious frequency did not bring her any closer.
Two hours later, the same scenario was repeated. In Paris, in the rain, the biggest sensation was given to the tireless fans by a sprinter who is hardly known outside of athletics circles. Her name is Julien Alfred. She is Caribbean. She is 23 years old. She started from lane six, and from lane seven, the American could only follow her tracks in the water. Boom, 10.71s for Alfred, with an explosive start and sustained speed, without fanfare. 10.87s for Richardson, who fell asleep in her heels again.
Experts are full of praise for Richardson as an athlete and as a person. They praise her position and her circular technique, combined with a prodigious and sustained frequency, which allow her to maintain her speed better than anyone else and make her the only one who could currently come close to the legendary women’s 100m record. They always add: but she can only achieve this if someone explains to her how to get out of the blocks effectively.
For the United States, Alfred’s victory is not news to celebrate the university of athletics, which was confirmed by the triple jump victory of Thea Lafond, from the neighboring island of Dominica, but to lament so much advertising and media investment in Richardson, world champion in Budapest. The athlete is a popular figure, a celebrity, beyond athletics since three years ago she was unable to participate in the Tokyo Games, suspended for several months for testing positive for cannabis after smoking a marijuana joint to ease her grief when her grandmother died.
Alfred’s life is one that parents like to read to their lazy children. Humble birth, drama, emigration, searching, the double courage that a woman needs to get to where a man is. It was the librarian at the school in Castries, the capital of the island, who discovered her qualities when she saw her at recess beating all the boys in first and second grade. When she lost her father at the age of 12, Alfred gave up sport for a while. Her coach, Cuthbert Modeste, went to her village and convinced her to come back. To continue being an athlete, she had to move alone to Jamaica, the land of speed, at the age of 14. She ended up, like all the greats, with a scholarship at a university in the United States, in Texas.
