PARIS — Julien Alfred awoke on the morning of the Olympic 100-meter final feeling like she needed some extra inspiration. The Saint Lucia sprinter pulled up videos of some of Usain Bolt’s Olympic victories.
“I was picturing myself coming across the line and being an Olympic champion,” Alfred said.
Only hours later, Alfred's vision became reality. Alfred burst out of the blocks and ran away from American pre-race favorite Sha'Carri Richardson with startling ease, winning in a blazing 10.72 seconds to secure her tiny Caribbean nation's first Olympic medal of any color.
As a smiling Alfred streaked across the finish line, she ripped her bib off and started pointing at her name. It’s a name that is now etched in history after the 23-year-old ran the eighth-fastest women’s 100 in history Saturday night on Stade de France’s rain-soaked purple track.
All week, the path to Olympic gold seemed to be clearing for Richardson, the reigning world champion three years removed from a positive marijuana test that cost her the chance to vie for a medal in Tokyo. When Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was scratched before Saturday’s semifinal with a hamstring injury, it ensured that not a single one of the Jamaicans who swept the Olympic podium in Tokyo would contend for the final in Paris.
In retrospect, it was Alfred whom Richardson should have feared most. The two-time former NCAA champion in the women’s 100 seemed unbothered by the Paris downpour, her winning margin of 15 hundredths of a second the largest in an Olympic final since 2008.
“My coach’s message was to go out there, warm up confident and just trust myself and trust the training that I’ve done,” Alfred said. “Yesterday, I was a bit nervous. I didn’t know what I was doing to be honest. Today, I had to go out there and just have fun.”
Alfred’s victory is the culmination of a journey that she said began in Saint Lucia’s capital city, with her running barefoot in her school uniform. She eventually secured the attention of her school teachers when she began beating the boys in her first- and second-grade classes.
Bolt was Alfred’s childhood hero.
“I just wanted to be just like him,” she said.
With tears welling up in her eyes Saturday night, Alfred described the heartbreak of her beloved father’s death when she was 12. For months, she quit running after he passed, unable to bear the thought of doing their shared passion by herself.
"He’d always be so boastful of his daughter being a future Olympian,” Alfred said.
By age 14, Alfred had rediscovered her love for sprinting, but she felt like she needed a different environment to fully tap into her potential. In 2015, she moved to Jamaica to attend St. Catherine High School and “to see how far I could go with the sport.”
The answer was far, unimaginably far for someone who grew up humbly on an island with fewer than 200,000 people and little tradition of athletic success. In 2018, she accepted a scholarship to Texas. In 2022, she won the first of two NCAA titles in the 100. In 2023, she swept the 100 and the 200 at NCAAs, turned pro and signed with Puma.
Failing to medal in either the 100 or 200 at World Championships last year shook Alfred’s confidence. At that point, she said she didn’t believe she could become an Olympic champion in Paris.
Her mindset changed over the course of this season as she began to put up some fast times in both the 100 and 200. Now she’s an Olympic champion with the chance to use her platform to help kids in Saint Lucia understand what’s possible for them.
“I’m really hoping that we can get a new stadium,” Alfred said. “I’m really hoping that we can help the youth in the country believe that they can get out of the ghetto, help them believe that they can make it here.
“We can come from a small place but also be on the biggest stage.”
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