Sha’Carri Richardson’s performance at the 100-meter final at the 2024 Olympics should have crowned her as one of the world’s top sprinters. Paris was to mark an overcoming after removal from the 2021 games for testing positive for marijuana.
Richardson was supposed to win gold and prove the naysayers wrong about her character as an athlete. She was to blast past the trauma of hearing about the death of her biological mother from a reporter. She was to move through her grief and depression and her last-place finish in the 100-meter race at the Prefontaine Classic following her Tokyo suspension.
It was supposed to be that inspirational Hollywood ending for the mercurial Richardson. But in the real world, things rarely turn out that way.
Richardson finished second and got the silver medal. In the race itself, St. Lucia’s Julien Alfred got off to a better start and came away with a convincing upset win over Richardson.
What struck me about Richardson’s second-place finish was some of the social media reactions that she choked or just wasn’t clutch enough to win. To some, it was a disappointing performance because she won the silver medal. To some, Richardson’s second-place finish was a failure.
Really?
To get a silver medal in the pressure cooker of an Olympic track meet is no small feat. In the case of Richardson, it took Alfred to run the race of her life to beat the 24-year-old American in the 100-meter dash.
It should also be noted that Richardson was denied entry to the warm-up area that day due to a change she was not made aware of, The Sporting News is reporting. This forced her to walk some distance to another entrance and alter her traditional warm up.
Richardson’s second-place finish in the 100-meter was just a part of the journey and not a major setback or a loss as casual observers of the sport would like to characterize it. For one thing, Richardson will have another shot at a gold medal as a member of the U.S. 4×100-meter relay team on Thursday. Her team is heavily favored to win the gold medal in that event.
The one factor that so-called disappointed or skeptical Richardson fans overlook is that she has already proven that she is among the elite athletes in her event. After her last-place performance at the Prefontaine Classic in 2021, for which she was vilified on social media, she vowed that she would be back on top of the world.
“This is one race, I’m not done yet,” Richardson said back then. “You know what I’m capable of. Count me out if you want to. Talk all the s—t you want ‘cause I’m here to stay, I’m not done.”
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Of course, Richardson was true to her word. She has done nothing but excel even up to this day. In 2023 at the World Track and Field Championships in Budapest, Richardson captured the world championship in the 100-meter dash and anchored the U.S. 4×100-meter relay to the gold medal.
This year at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Richardson ran the fastest 100-meter dash time in the world. In Paris, everything that happened in 2021 is now a distant memory.
Richardson had already proven her resilience in the face of a tough situation. Her resolve in the crucible of a difficult period in her life transformed her into one of the best sprinters on Earth.
For Richardson, part of being back and better is her recognition that there will be ups and downs. As she so eloquently said in the aftermath of winning the world championships last year: “You’re going to have good days. You’re going to have bad days. You’re going to have better days.”
Part of Richardson’s maturity as an athlete is the realization that even the greatest Olympians have had days without wins.
The journey to athletic greatness is no crystal stair, to quote Langston Hughes.
But as recent history has shown, Richardson will rage on against the dying of the light and will not go out gently into that night.
