Breakout star Sha’Carri Richardson: How the 100m world champion reinvented herself
The 23-year-old is arguably the most devastating sprinter operating today. Olympics.com looks at her turnaround from talented contender to the most dominant female 100m runner on the planet in 2023, as well as how close she has come to beating Flo-Jo’s long-standing 100m world record.
7 min
By Sean McAlister
Sha’Carri RICHARDSON
disciplineAthletics
Sha’Carri Richardson
(Christian Petersen/Getty Images for World Athletics)
In many ways, it’s strange to say that 2023 was a breakout year for 23-year-old US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson.
This is, after all, an athlete who has been re-writing the record books since she was a teen, including setting the fastest collegiate 100m mark in history at age 19 with a time of 10.75 seconds that also made her the ninth-fastest woman ever.
But have no doubts about it, this was the year that Richardson announced herself to the world – not as a contender but arguably as the number one female sprinter on the planet today.
The American’s victory in the 100m at the World Athletics Championships flew in the face of so much recent history that The Times used the word ‘shock’ in the headline of their race report.
It’s the same word the Guardian chose just 14 months earlier when the athlete was knocked out of the first round of the 2022 US trials to scupper her chances of competing in a World Championships on her home soil.
But in 2023 Richardson has been a different prospect since the season started. She has re-invented herself on the track in ways some thought unthinkable.
Her now-famous statement “I’m not back, I’m better” has become a symbol of her performances throughout this breakout year, where she has confounded expectations by becoming arguably the biggest star in US athletics today.
And she now stands on top of the world as the USA’s first women’s 100m world champion since the late Tori Bowie in 2017 and only the second non-Jamaican since Carmelita Jeter in 2011.
Sha’Carri Richardson and the interruption of Jamaican sprint dominance
It was no surprise to see that the two athletes standing next to Richardson on the 100m podium in Budapest both hailed from the Caribbean island of Jamaica.
Of the last nine World Athletics Championships 100m gold medal winners, six of them have been Jamaicans.
However, even that number is slightly misleading when you see that five of the last eight titles have belonged to one woman only – the great Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
In 2023, small chinks have appeared in the armour of Fraser-Pryce, who had looked unstoppable throughout near enough the entirety of last season.
Early this year, the 36-year-old suffered a knee injury that disrupted her ability to train and race, stating as recently as July that she was: “not at 100 per cent.”
But Jamaica are blessed with an enviable depth of sprinting talent and, with one legend struggling, another stepped up to take her place as the favourite for the World Championships 100m race: Shericka Jackson.
Jackson was the second fastest member of the Jamaican 100m sweep that had stunned the US crowds at home at the Oregon 2022 Worlds.
But this year, the fastest 200m runner alive today had brought her a-game to the shorter sprint, registering a world lead of 10.65 seconds in July to make her the favourite for gold in Budapest.
Richardson, whose personal best was 10.71 before the Worlds, had never even run close to that time.
So how would she cope when form and history were not on her side?
The young American’s answer was emphatic as she burst from the blocks in the outside lane and sprinted to victory in a new PB of 10.65. Jackson could not keep up, Fraser-Pryce settled for bronze and Richardson had made history at the Worlds.
“I wanted my performance to be all the words I needed to speak myself,” Richardson told World Athletics just after the race. “It feels amazing, it feels like everything has paid off and I’m grateful.”
