Sha'Carri Richardson has a completely different demeanor around her fellow athletes when she is not competing with the best in the world, as U.S. Open star Jessica Pegula found out .
The 30-year-old spoke with Prakash Amritraj during the Cincinnati Open where she explained her 2024 Olympic Games experience in Paris. In particular, the star tennis player shared how it felt meeting some of the biggest stars on Team USA , including Richardson.
"We did not have time to go see anybody, but, we met a lot of people at the village," Pegula said. "Katie Ledecky was super nice. Simone [Biles], Sha'Carri Richardson was really, really sweet, super talkative and nice. So yeah, we got to meet a few athletes."
Along with meeting Richardson and Team USA's stars, Pegula noted that she was able to meet other athletes from other sports. Specifically, Pegula caught up with the players from Ireland and the United States' rugby teams.
"And then people from totally different sports that we had no idea," she added. "We met couple of Irish rugby players, women, that was cool. We met Ilona Maher, she was really funny. Like, such a personality, exactly like you seen on her content."
Pegula was part of the American tennis contingent that went to Paris in hopes of winning gold. She was joined by Coco Gauff, Danielle Collins, Emma Navarro and Desirae Krawczyk, though Pegula was unsuccessful, falling to Elina Svitolina in the singles event and the tandem of Linda Noskova and Karolina Michova in the doubles event.
Richardson's Olympic outing was much more successful than Pegula's, winning two medals during the Summer Games. In the women's 100m final, the 24-year-old won her first Olympic medal, a silver as she raced St. Lucia's Julien Alfred, who won the nation's first Olympic medal.
Then in the 4x100m relay, Richardson joined Melissa Jefferson, Twanisha Terry, and Gabby Thomas in securing the gold medal by finishing with a time of 41.78 seconds. Great Britain came in second with a time of 41.85 seconds.
While Richardson winning gold was an accomplishment in and of itself, perhaps the most memorable aspect of the 4x100m came on the final stretch of the race. As she was sprinting to the finish, she had built up such a lead that she was able to briefly look at her competition, which immediately became a meme on social media.
After the race, Richardson explained what was going through her mind as she looked back at her opponents, claiming that there was no malicious intent meant with her gesture. “Honestly, that look over, if I had to just highlight anything, the look over was — it’s almost like it was a mirror on that side of me, and I’m just looking at a version of myself that nobody but me could see, if that makes sense,” she told Refinery 21.
"I was just like, there’s no way that I’m not going to leave my best on the track. And so just looking over, it was more so showing that the hard work that all of us ladies in that 4×1 put in was not going to be in vain.
"I wasn’t going to even allow myself to not cross that finish line in first place and not get that medal, or to let down those ladies and the support that we received when it comes to us crossing the finish line, in first place as Team USA."
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