The Jamaicans have dominated the women’s 200-metre sprint for an incredible 41 years, but the possibility of this ending looms large with the approaching Paris Olympics.
The competition has been thrown open because the reigning champion, the Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah, won’t be defending her title in Paris.
She has registered to compete only in the 100 metres, and not the 200 metres, at the Jamaican Athletics Championships from June 27 to 30. The deadline to register passed on Monday (June 17).
The Jamaicans and Americans to watch
Jamaica has other celebrated sprinters such as Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson.
But they will face strong competition from the Americans.
Currently, the 27-year-old American Gabby Thomas is at the top of her game. She has the third-best time in the world this season in the 200 metres, clocking in at 22.08 seconds.
The American McKenzie Long, who holds the world lead in the event, is another strong contender. She will be seen in action soon at the US Olympic track and field trials. Five more of the season’s best athletes will be competing with her for coveted spots on the US Olympic team.
Anavia Battle and Brittany Brown will also be vying for the 200-metre spot with great intensity.
Brown’s chances of winning this season have increased because of her recent victory over Jamaican great Shericka Jackson at the Oslo Diamond League.
The Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is also in the running.
The ten-time world champion Fraser-Pryce will make her Olympic debut in the 200-metre sprint at the Jamaican trials. It will be a noteworthy moment in her remarkable 22-year career.
Fraser-Pryce hasn’t won the 200-metre Olympic gold yet, but her perseverance and track record of incredible returns make her a serious competitor.
Shericka Jackson to face Gabrielle Thomas in the running battle of the fastest women
Shericka Jackson and Gabrielle Thomas, two of the world’s fastest women over the 200 metres, will be vying for their first individual Olympic gold at the Paris Games.
Jackson was part of the Jamaican quartet that won the 4×100 metres gold in Tokyo three years ago, but her individual best is a 100-metre bronze from Tokyo.
Thomas was one of the American foursome that claimed the 4×100 metres silver in Tokyo. Her individual best is a 200-metre silver from Tokyo, where she was beaten to the gold by the Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah.
Thompson-Herah, who did a treble in Tokyo, winning the 100 metres, 200 metres and the 4×100 metre relay, is not competing in Paris because of an Achilles tendon injury.
Despite her absence, the Paris 200 metres will see a formidable field.
Shericka Jackson
Jackson, the reigning 200-metre world champion, won the event at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in 21.41 seconds. Only one woman has run the 200 metres faster – the late Florence Griffith-Joyner of the United States, who clocked 21.34 seconds, a world record to this day.
While Jackson’s is the second fastest 200-metre run by a woman, Thomas ran pretty close too. She ran the distance in 21.60 seconds – the fourth fastest time — in Eugene, United States, in September 2023.
Jackson came to Paris to run in the 100 metres as well as the 200 metres, but she pulled out of the 100 metres recently, citing an injury she suffered in a race in Hungary in July. She said she had to “protect my body”. She decided to focus on the 200 metres instead, in which she won the World Championships in 2022 and 2023.
Gabrielle Thomas
Thomas is also hoping for gold.
“When I came back from the Tokyo Olympics with a bronze medal and a silver, I was very happy with that,” she said in an interview with Sky Sport.
“I would have been happy ending my career there. It’s really all the outward talk and chatter that you hear that makes you want that gold medal. You’re like, ‘Dang, well I really got to go get that!’ But it wasn’t about that for me. It was about the fact that I put on a performance that I was proud of, and that was my best season to date. If I can go and replicate that in Paris, I’ll be really happy. Hopefully, that ends up with a gold medal.”
The 200 metres will be more than a two-horse race.
Jackson and Thomas will have to contend with other famous sprinters, such as Dina Asher-Smith, Great Britain’s 2019 world 200-metre champion, and Cote d’Ivoire legend Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith. The African star finished among the top five in the sprint double at the last two Games. The reigning world indoor 60-metre champion Julien Alfred will also be in the running. She will be raring to bring home the first Olympic medal to St Lucia.
A parting factoid for the fans: There have been only three repeat winners in the history of the women’s 200 metres at the Olympics. Elaine Thompson-Herah was the last. The 200-metre gold medallist in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the Tokyo Olympics three years ago is missing the action through injury.
Elaine Thompson-Herah, a five-time Olympic gold medallist, has decided not to run in the 200-metre event at the upcoming Jamaican trials. Therefore, she will not be defending her title at the Games in Paris in July.
At the June 27–30 Jamaican Athletics Championships, the sprinter is only registered to compete in the 100 metres.
On her recent performances
At the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene last month, Thompson-Herah—who became the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic sprint doubles when she won her 100- and 200-metre crowns in Tokyo—came in last in her season-opening 100-metre race, clocking in at 11.30 seconds.
She appeared to suffer an injury during the 100-metre race in the NYC Grand Prix earlier this month, finishing with a performance record of 11.48. She had previously participated in the 200-metre competition in April 2023.
The athlete recently named Reynaldo Walcott as her new coach, after she and Shanikie Osbourne parted ways last November.
The Paris Olympics’ athletics competition will be held at the Stade de France from August 1 to 11, 2024.
The heats are on to find out the world’s fastest woman. And the preliminary findings show the current favourite American Sha’Carrie Richardson has not blown off the competition yet. Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the 100-metre silver medal winner in Tokyo three years ago, is still in the race.
The 100-metre in Tokyo ended in an all-Jamaican podium finish with Elaine Thompson-Herah winning gold and Shericka Jackson clinching bronze. However, Thompson-Herah is not competing in Paris because of an Achilles tendon injury while Jackson pulled out of the 100-metre to focus on the 200-metre, her pet event, after being injured in a race in Hungary in July.
Queen in a da deck!!!!! The incomparable Shelly Ann Fraser Pryce🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲 pic.twitter.com/pUpp0HdLk3
Fraser-Pryce is considered one of the greatest sprinters of all time. She boasts five world titles and won the 100-metre Olympic gold medal in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012.
However, now 37 years old, can she hold off a young gun like Richardson?
The veteran, dubbed “Mommy Rocket”, isn’t done as yet.
This is her Olympic swan song, she says, and she aims to give of her best.
“It’s the final Olympic Games; let me repeat that,” Fraser-Pryce told journalists in Paris. “ I’m really looking forward to the experience, stepping on the track and always, once I get on the line, I’m giving 100 percent at all times and that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 2, 2024
Sha’Carri Richardson
Richardson, 24, is the reigning world champion and the fastest woman this year, having posted a 10.71 in June.
She is taking part in her first Olympics, and looking forward to the competition.
“To be at the Olympics is a phenomenal feeling,” Richardson said. “I’m super excited and eager to compete on the Olympic stage.”
She couldn’t take part in Tokyo as she was suspended after testing positive for marijuana. Raised by her grandmother and an aunt, she said she took the drug to cope with the news that her biological mother had died.
Richardson and Fraser-Pryce both qualified for the semi-finals.
Richardson ran 10.94 to win the first heat on Friday (August 2).
However, Fraser-Pryce set a better time, clocking 10.92 to finish second behind Marie Josee Ta Lou-Smith of Ivory Coast in the eighth and final heat.
Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith of Ivory Coast had the fastest time on Friday with 10.87, as she held off Fraser-Pryce down the home stretch in a thrilling final heat. She is hungry for a spot on the podium after fourth-place finishes in the last two Games.
Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred, Canada’s Audrey Leduc, Poland’s Ewa Swoboda, the United States’ Twanisha Terry, Britain’s Daryll Neita and Dina Asher-Smith, Jamaica’s Tia Clayton and Shashalee Forbes and Gambia’s Gina Mariam Bass Bittaye are among the others who advanced to the semi-finals.
Sha’Carri Richardson vs Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce: Sprinting legend vs young hotshot
The Paris Olympics will settle in 10 seconds who is the fastest woman in the world. Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has bagged medals at every Olympic Games since Beijing 2008. Now, at 37, having just recovered from an injury last year, the sprinting legend is up against a young hotshot. American Sha’Carri Richardson, 24, will be making her Olympic debut after breaking the Jamaican’s record.
Richardson’s Olympic campaign has already got off to a good start. She finished first in her heats in the opening round of the US Olympic track and field trials on Friday (June 21) with a time of 10.88 seconds.
Fraser-Pryce will be seen at the Jamaican Olympic trials, beginning on June 27. Down with a hamstring injury suffered in the 4x100m at the Budapest World Championships in August 2023, she ran her first race this year only on June 15. She won the 100m race in Kingston, Jamaica, in 11.15 seconds.
That’s slow compared with Richardson’s Olympic trials time, but slow starts are not unusual for Fraser-Pryce, points out Total Running Productions. She opened her 2019 season with an even slower time of 11.20 seconds but ran under 10.90 seconds seven times that year.
So, she can pick up the pace when needed.
How they stack up against each other
See how Richardson and Fraser-Pryce measure against each other in a YouTube video posted by Total Running Productions.
They first faced each other in the 100m at the Prefontaine Classic in Palo Alto, California on June 30, 2019.
Richardson was faster than Fraser-Pryce. The American came fourth, the Jamaican seventh. Fraser wasn’t even “close to sprinting”, she was “practically jogging”, said the commentator in the YouTube video. The Jamaican could be much faster, as she proved when she won the 100m in 10.71 seconds in the World Championships finals in Doha, Qatar, later that year, on September 29, 2019.
Richardson, nevertheless, has a slight edge in showdowns against Fraser-Pryce. They have competed in seven races – and Richardson has won four, Fraser-Pryce three.
Richardson’s recent success
But Fraser-Pryce clocked faster times than Richardson in the 100m every year from 2016 till 2022 – and then the tide turned.
Richardson struck gold at the 2023 World Championships, winning the 100m in 10.65 seconds, setting a new record, beating Fraser-Pryce, and shaving .05 seconds off the record set by the Jamaican only the previous year.
The Paris Olympics could be the crowning moment for Richardson, says Total Running Productions.
The Jamaicans used to dominate the 100m, but the only Jamaican now in the top 10 is Bryanna Lyston at Louisiana State University who unexpectedly completed her season and dropped out of the Olympics.
Besides Richardson, there are other highly regarded young Americans such as Aleia Hobbs, McKenzie Long and Jacious Sears, currently the world’s fastest woman with the season’s best time of 10.77 seconds.
The favourite
Richardson seems to be the favourite, though. “After a tumultuous 2021 season and a rather disappointing 2022 season she has turned everything around, she has reached the top of the world, she broke the championship record of one of her Jamaican rivals and now she is just the favourite for this Olympic Games,” says the commentator in the YouTube video
Fraser-Pryce has said she will retire after the Paris Olympics. “My son needs me,” she said about her child, born in 2017.
She has already won medals at every Olympics since 2008. Her Olympic haul includes gold medals in the 100 m in Beijing (2008) and London (2012) as well as in the 4x100m in Tokyo (2021); silver medals in the 200 m in London and the 4x100m in London and Rio (2016); and a bronze in the 100m in Rio. Whoever wins in Paris, she will be remembered as one of the greatest sprinters ever.
Source: Total Running Productions
Shericka Jackson fulfils a sprint double at the Jamaican Olympic trials
Shericka Jackson won the women’s 200 metres, completing the sprint double on the last day of the Jamaican Olympic trials.
The athlete, who is the double 200m world champion, finished in 22.29 seconds, her best performance of the year. Her record was followed by Lanae-Tava Thomas in second place with 22.34 seconds and Niesha Burgher in third with 22.39 seconds.
About her recent achievements, Jackson declared: “I’m pretty pleased given how the season was going. I ran a season-best yesterday and came back with another season-best today, so I’m definitely happy.”
She added: “I’m happy and healthy, so it’s go-time for the Olympics.”
Other athletes who broke records at the trials
Ackera Nugent broke a national record to win the 100m hurdles. The athlete finished in 12.28 seconds, beating two-time world champion Danielle Williams, who finished second with 12.53 seconds, and Janeek Brown third with 12.61 seconds.
Nugent admitted: “This is something that I’ve written down for myself, it’s on my mirror, it’s on my phone so I knew that I was capable and as long as I trusted the process and remained coachable, everything would come together at the end.”
Nugent stated that in preparation for the trials, she worked on regulating her speed between hurdles.
“There are other phenomenal ladies out there that will be coming, so the only thing I can do is focus on me… It’s my first full year as a professional, so it just about making the adjustments with better runs,” she added.
The men’s 110m hurdles was decided by a photo finish, with Commonwealth Games champion Rasheed Broadbell winning in 13.18 seconds, just five-thousandths of a second faster than Orlando Bennett. Meanwhile, Bryan Levell won the men’s 200m in a personal best of 19.97 seconds, followed by Andrew Hudson with 20.02 seconds and Javari Thomas with 20.32 seconds.
