“‘I’m a Bentley,” Sha’Carri Richardson says proudly at one point in Sprint, the fly-on-the-wall Netflix series that follows some of the world’s leading track stars. “Fast, expensive … fancy.” It shows how little she knows about cars.
Bentleys are all about subtlety. The amenities don’t intrude. The speed is hushed. They’re grand but never ostentatious. Richardson? She’s a Lamborghini: not just fast but abruptly so while, at the same time, loud and susceptible to spiralling out of control at any moment. But this latest edition of the Richardson is vastly more fine-tuned for her Olympic debut – on Friday, a do-over of sorts as she won her 100m heat comfortably.
One of the most recognisable athletes on Earth, the 24-year-old Richardson has somehow managed to keep a lower profile than ever. Of course, she’s still rocking the bold body ink and the acrylic nails, a conspicuous callback to legendary US sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, but the brightly coloured wigs that were long her trademark have been replaced by more natural styles. All the while, she has remained inescapably prominent in NBC’s TV promotional blitz in the US, and in adverts for Olay and Oikos.
For those who may have forgotten Richardson’s story so far, just three years ago she logged perhaps the fastest rise and fall from grace in US sports history. Shortly after winning the 100m at the 2021 US Olympic trials, she tested positive for THC, the primary ingredient in cannabis – which, while legal in Oregon, has been on the Olympics’ forbidden list since 1999.
Richardson said that she had taken the drug to manage the stress of having to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics while mourning the death of her biological mother – news, she says, that was broken to her in a pre-race interview. Family is a delicate matter for Richardson. Reportedly, she has never claimed relationships with either her mother or her father. In Sprint, the Netflix series, Richardson’s aunt Shayaria is credited as “Sha’Carri’s mom”. After her golden heat in the 2021 US trials, Richardson made a beeline to her grandmother Betty Harp – whom, in Vogue, she credits with “making me the person I am.”
In an attempt at damage control after the 2021 US trials, Richardson made an appearance on NBC’s Today Show and showed just how poorly equipped her PR minders were for that job. They couldn’t even be bothered to change the battery in a chirping smoke alarm at Richardson’s house, let alone shoot her properly for the remote interview, leaving her looking as harsh as the rest of us do on Zoom calls.
They also let her stand for the whole interview, which led to her fidgeting with her posture and hair. That distracted viewers from noticing the pain in her voice at having to serve a month-long suspension as the Games approached.
What’s more, she shrugged off the positive test as no big deal in the grand scheme of things, and in the third person no less. “When it comes to Sha’Carri Richardson, it’s never been a steroid. It will never be a steroid attached to the name Sha’Carri Richardson,” she said. “The charge and what the situation was, was marijuana. I’m not encouraging anybody to do it. I’m not saying, ‘Oh, don’t do it’ or anything like that. But if you choose to do things in your personal time [like that] you just should know or be aware of the consequences or find different ways to cope.”
A year on from that interview, Richardson would tweet: “I wish I never did this.”
Richardson’s compulsion to keep talking only made it easier for critics to pick her apart for acting “ghetto” and tangling with the reporters who cover her, and easier for USA Track and Field to leave her off the squad for the 4x100m relay in Tokyo – even though her suspension would have been over in time. For Black American fans familiar with the International Olympic Committee’s kangaroo courts and the US’s relaxed views on marijuana consumption, Richardson became yet another symbol of systemic injustice – and before long Richardson was accusing the IOC of racial discrimination.
But, arguably, Richardson’s biggest misstep was poking the biggest bear in athletics: the Jamaican track and field team, who were fresh off their historic 100m podium lockout at the Tokyo Games. When Richardson finally faced them in the 2021 Diamond League’s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, in the same arena where she had qualified for Tokyo, she could only watch them run by on her way to a dead-last finish (not that it stopped her from trash-talking). Her results didn’t get much better from there.
But in 2023, Richardson came back a changed woman, taking long (for her) leaves from social media to recommit to her training. She opened the season by setting the fourth-fastest women’s 100m time (aided in part by a strong tailwind) to win the Miramar Invitational. A month later in Doha, she set a meet record in the 100m to notch her first Diamond League crown. Later that summer, at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Richardson struck maiden golds in the 100m and 4x100m. For the past 18 months, Richardson has not only been one of the most consistent top performers on track; she added the 200m to her arsenal, and proved she could be just as dangerous at twice her usual distance despite her propensity for starting slow out of the blocks.
While she narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Paris Olympics in the 200m, where American Gabby Thomas is queen, Richardson cruised to victory in the 100m at this summer’s US Olympic trials in world-beating time. But the thing that has really stood out is how effortlessly she seems to go from putting on her game face and dusting her rivals to switching it off and being gracious and supportive of them again. She has made herself easy to root for again to the point where even Jamaican fans who once gloried in her hubristic collapse are praising her.
But some of that newfound respect could be grounded in fear: Jamaica’s Olympic 100m champion, Elaine Thompson-Herah, was snatched from the Games with an achilles injury that the NBC analyst Ato Boldon believes will end her career. Shericka Jackson, who has only improved since her bronze finish in the Tokyo 100m, withdrew from the Paris 100m on Wednesday to focus on the 200m.
That leaves Richardson as an overwhelming favourite heading into Saturday’s final. “In the past three years, I’ve grown a better understanding of myself, a deeper respect and appreciation for my gift that I have in the sport, as well as my responsibility to the people that believe in me and support me,” Richardson told reporters after punching her Paris ticket. There’s a lot to like about this new and improved model.
