Sha'Carri Richardson and Julien Alfred: A budding rivalry to take women's 100m sprinting into the next stage
When the two women go head-to-head at the Zurich Diamond League for the first time since the Paris 2024 final, they will take the newest rivalry in women's sprinting into its next phase as the new Olympic quad commences.
Athletics
The women's 100m final at Paris 2024 seemed to mark a changing of the guard in women's sprinting.
For that night in Paris, the top three finishers were all born in 2000 or later, and there was only one Jamaican in the race – Tia Clayton, also born in 2000.
Not present on the start line? Elaine Thompson-Herah and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, two veterans who between them took the previous four titles, nor Shericka Jackson, the world silver medallist, citing an injury.
On Thursday (5 September), the gold and silver medallists from that race – Julien Alfred and Sha'Carri Richardson – will go head-to-head again for the first time since that rainy Saturday night on 3 August at the Stade de France, and look to take the women's 100m into the next phase with what appears to be a budding rivalry.
Zurich's Weltklasse Diamond League meet will be the setting for the next stage in this intriguing contest, a first chance for Richardson to remind Alfred and the world exactly why she is world champion.
No Jamaican favourites, but enter Julien Alfred
Alfred had been knocking on the door leading up to Paris 2024. And yet for the most part, almost all the hype in the sprints as the national championships and trials approached was on Richardson taking on the Jamaicans in Paris.
Exactly which Jamaicans would make the team, and how fast would they run against Richardson, who beat them in the 100m and took world 200m bronze in the 2023 World Championships?
It wouldn't be Thompson-Herah – she missed the Jamaican trials through injury. Then shortly before the Games, Jackson pulled out of the 100m to focus on the 200m (which she would also eventually skip).
So when it was announced that Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce would not start her semi-final after sustaining an injury in warm-up, it meant that there would definitely be a new Olympic champion, and it made Richardson the hot favourite.
Enter Julien Alfred, who ripped up the script and wrote her own name into the record books at Saint Lucia's first Olympic medallist (and champion) in 10.72 seconds.
Alfred would go on to win 200m silver too, in an event Richardson was not selected for after finishing fourth at the U.S. trials.
The next generation of women's 100m talents
It all means that this new generation of women's sprinting talents – Alfred and Richardson, of course, but also the likes of 23-year-old Olympic bronze medallist Melissa Jefferson, the 20-year-old Clayton, and 25-year-old TeeTee Terry – are finally coming to the fore.
Yes, Jackson will return from injury and continue to be a threat in both sprint distances – she is the world 200m champion, ultimately, and is still only 30 – but it certainly felt like Paris was the changing of the guard from Thompson-Herah and Fraser-Pryce to this next, exciting group.
Richardson's obvious disappointment at missing out on individual 100m gold sets things up nicely as the athletes enter the next Olympic quad, one that will terminate on home soil for Richardson, Jefferson, and Terry at LA28 with what will be a boisterous home crowd behind them at the LA Memorial Coliseum.
Julien Alfred has a role to play in that quad as the reigning Olympic champion. Nothing gets the excitement going quite like a rivalry, after all.
And it all resumes on Thursday in Zurich.