2024-08-04 21:15:02
This is part of Slate’s 2024 Olympics coverage. Read more here.
On Saturday, at the Stade de France in Paris, the stage was all set for one of those classic Olympics redemption stories. After missing the Tokyo Games entirely due to a positive drug test and a controversial suspension, the American sprinter Sha’carri Richardson was set to make her Olympics debut in the 100-meter dash—and potentially claim the gold medal that she didn’t get a chance to win three years ago. In June, at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Richardson ran the 100-meter dash in 10.71 seconds—the fastest time that any woman anywhere had posted this year. Going into Paris, she was the odds-on favorite to win 100-meter gold.
And then … she didn’t. In a final that featured none of the three Jamaican sprinters who took the podium in Tokyo, Richardson came in second to Julien Alfred, from Saint Lucia, a small Caribbean nation that, until today, had never won an Olympic medal in anything. Richardson seemed to get out of the blocks slowly, and initially lagged behind much of the field. She kicked it into gear halfway through and recovered in time to claim the silver medal. But there was no catching Alfred, who led for much of the race and crossed the finish line a stride-and-a-half before anyone else.
Although Alfred has been running really well this year—the 10.78-second 100-meter dash she ran in June was, before Saturday, the third-fastest women’s time logged in 2024—her Olympic gold still counts as an upset. For Richardson and her fans, meanwhile, her silver medal surely counts as a disappointment. But only a fool or a troll would call her performance a failure.
The past five years of Richardson’s life have been the stuff of biopics. In 2019, as a college freshman, she broke the collegiate record in the 100-meter dash, clocking a time of 10.75 seconds—the fastest 100-meter dash that any woman anywhere had run in two years. But, as plenty of people noted at the time, Richardson’s time would have been even faster had she not begun celebrating her victory before crossing the finish line. The screenwriter who pens the eventual Sha’Carri Richardson movie will likely use this incident as a bit of thematic foreshadowing: a spectacular athlete who can only be slowed by her own choices.
In 2021, at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Richardson won the 100-meter dash with a time of 10.86 seconds. She was all set to go to Tokyo—and, then … she didn’t. After testing positive for marijuana usage, Richardson was hit with a one-month suspension from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that would end days after the Tokyo Olympics began. Unlike some other Olympic contenders who have failed pre-Games drug tests, Richardson chose not to appeal her suspension. She stayed home and watched in 2021 as Jamaica swept the women’s 100-meter podium.
If you were paying attention to the Olympics in 2021, then you’ll surely remember that Richardson’s suspension made a lot of people very angry—and not without reason. Marijuana is hardly a performance-enhancing drug, which raised questions about why the USADA was testing for it at all. What’s more, marijuana is legal in many American states—including Oregon, the state in which Richardson used it. While the track star admitted to using marijuana during the Olympic Trials, she said that she had done so after learning that her biological mother had recently died. (Richardson was raised by her grandmother and her aunt.)
“I want to take responsibility for my actions. … I’m not looking for an excuse,” Richardson said at the time, even as countless Twitter moralists seemed to take self-righteous joy in her absence. But she also made clear that the suspension was just a speed bump in her Olympics journey. “This will be the last time the Olympics don’t see Sha’Carri Richardson,” she said. “… I have plenty of Games left in me to compete in, and I have plenty of talent that backs me up.”
The sprinter has spent much of the past three years living up to her own prediction. In 2023, she won the world championship in the 100-meter dash with a time of 10.65 seconds. This June, at the U.S. Olympic Trials, she finished first in the 100-meter dash once again, besting her 2021 mark by 0.15 seconds and punching her ticket to Paris with that year’s-fastest 10.71. She entered Saturday as both the statistical and the sentimental favorite for Olympic gold.
The fact that she finished just short of that outcome doesn’t define Richardson either as a person or an athlete—and it certainly doesn’t mean that she failed. Richardson’s eight competitors on Saturday might not have been favored to win, but they also weren’t eight random slobs who’d been pulled out of the stands. They’re eight of the fastest women in the world. On any given day, any single one of them is capable of winning any race that they enter. Yes, Richardson is exceptionally fast, and is having a great year—but no matter how fast you are, sometimes you just get beat.
Julien Alfred, Saturday’s victor, has beaten Richardson before. She comes from Saint Lucia, which boasts a population of about 180,000 people—or roughly the same population as Chattanooga, Tennessee. The island nation is hardly an international sporting powerhouse—which makes Alfred’s gold not just surprising, but meaningful, in a way that’s hard for Americans to understand. Saturday’s 100-meter dash final was shown on a big outdoor screen in Saint Lucia, and when Alfred crossed the finish line, the crowd erupted as if they had all just won the lottery. At that moment, it felt like Alfred’s victory wasn’t just Alfred’s victory—it was all of Saint Lucia’s victory.
In some fictionalized cinematic version of Richardson’s story, she would have run away with the gold in Paris. But real life rarely resolves as neatly as the movies do—and, as it turns out, Julien Alfred’s story is a pretty good one, too. As for Richardson, well, she’s 24 years old and running as well as she ever has, and she will still be in her prime when the Los Angeles Games kick off in 2028. While her silver medal on Saturday might strike some as a disappointment, it isn’t a tragedy, it isn’t a failure, and it almost certainly isn’t the end of her Olympic story. She’s got four more years now to work on writing her ideal ending.
