Sha’Carri Richardson set to rewrite her Olympic story at Paris 2024
Get ready to hear the name Sha’Carri Richardson a lot over the next 10 days at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The new purple track at the Stade de France offers the Team USA sprint star a chance to rewrite her Olympic story.
It started three years ago when she qualified for Tokyo 2020 with the fastest 100m women’s time at the U.S. trials. But it was a momentary triumph.
The athlete never made it to Japan as she was suspended for testing positive for THC (cannabis), a banned substance under World Anti-Doping Agency rules.
Three years later, Richardson is ready for her Olympic debut, and is now one of track and field’s brightest stars.
“That’s just authentically who I am. I never play small, this is how I show up in life,” Richardson told Elle Magazine.
The fastest woman over the 100m this season is the Olympic gold medal favourite with a PB of 10.65 seconds from last year’s World Championships, where she took double gold.
Her proclamation that, ‘I’m not back, I’m better,’ encapsulates how she wants to reintroduce herself on the biggest stage.
Sha'Carri Richardson on her new look at Paris 2024
When Richardson crossed the finish line of the 100m at the 2024 U.S. trials, she secured her quota for the Paris Olympics with a world-leading time, and in style.
The 24-year-old, known for her glitz on track, debuted a more subtle look with no colourful hair.
“I wanted to focus on competing at my best, and my look reflected that,” she told the Elle Magazine a few weeks ago. “It was clean, fresh, and fast.”
"Every chapter I have had in my life prepared me for this moment. This time around, I feel as if it was more − definitely still confident, still my exciting, normal self, but more so the overwhelming feeling of joy," she said after her thrilling win despite tripping over own shoelace.
“I would say in the past three years I’ve grown, just having a better understanding of myself, a deeper respect and appreciation for my gift that I have in the sport, and as well as my responsibility to the people that believe in and support me,” Richardson told USA today last June.
“Having a deeper love and a deeper care for the talent I have been given and I take advantage of it, nurture it, take care of my body, my mind as well as my spirit. That way I can continue to execute and show up on the track.”
Richardson did sport long nails painted in the colours of the USA flag at the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, but in general, she has chosen to maintain the muted look she’s kept since the U.S. Track and Field Championships in July 2023.
Back then, when she was introduced to the crowd before the start of the 100m race, she tossed off her signature orange wig. It was a symbolic moment, ushering in her new look and the start of her comeback. The sprinter told Elle that she was inspired by her life experiences and her family.
"My grandmother, my aunt, and my mother all influence the beauty I exude to the world on a day-to-day basis, especially in big moments,” she said. “They kept their nails well-manicured. Hair was also something that I saw a lot of attentiveness to.”
Richardson will be desperate to meet the lofty expectations of her in what will be a mouth-watering event in Paris. Her chances of gold have even increased in the past 48 hours, following Shericka Jackson’s decision to race only the 200m.
In France, the U.S. star in the good company of her training mates and also first-time Olympians Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha Terry, seeking to reclaim an Olympic title no American has managed to win in nearly three decades.
"These girls... they're my sisters. I love them to death," Jefferson said after they went 1-2-3 in the women's 100m final at Trials. "They pushed me in ways I never knew I could be pushed. The group in itself, it takes you to another level mentally."
A strong training partnership under coach Dennis Mitchell, himself an Olympic champion, that may just deliver the gold medal that has eluded USA since Gail Devers' triumph at Atlanta 1996.