The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Thompson-Herah breaks Flo Jo’s record in 100
TOKYO — Streaking down the track, with only six steps to go until she reached the finish line, Elaine Thompson-Herah stuck out her left arm and started pointing at the clock.
She knew she had the win.
It was only a matter of what else would come with it.
With a time of 10.61 seconds, the latest in the long string of Jamaican speed stars defended her Olympic title in the 100 meters Saturday. She broke a 33-yearold Olympic record held by none other than Florence Griffith Joyner. And, as a more-than-fitting bonus, she revisited a debate first triggered by the fastest Jamaican of all — Usain Bolt.
Yes, the gold medal and Flo Jo’s venerable record were great. But the question could not be avoided: Just as people wondered what Bolt might have given up when he hotdogged his way to the finish line in his first Olympic victory in 2008, how much faster might Thompson-Herah have gone had she run hard for 100 meters, not just 90 or 95?
“I think I could have gone faster if I wasn’t pointing and celebrating, really,” she said. “But to
show you that there’s more in store. Hopefully, one day I can unleash that time.”
As it was, she finished the night as the secondfastest woman in history. Flo Jo’s world record of 10.49 is only mark left to beat.
As it was, she beat a two-time Olympic champion, Shelly-Ann FraserPryce, and joined bronze medalist Shericka Jackson in the first Jamaican podium sweep at the Olympics since 2008.
“The legacy we have in Jamaica is incredible,” Fraser-Pryce said.
Yet, with all that swirling around, it felt more than
fitting that ThompsonHerah was drawing comparisons to Bolt, who redefined the sprint game with his antics, to say nothing of his speed, and left a hole in track and field after he left the Olympic scene in 2016 with nine victories in nine sprints.
In the first win, the 6foot-5 speedster was well clear of the field in Beijing when he brought his hands out to his sides and started his celebration before he reached the finish line. His time, 9.69, was a world record. But the world went crazy — even then-IOC President Jacques Rogge leveled a sharp critique of the move — wondering what might have been had Bolt busted it through the line.
He answered the question a year later when he lowered the mark to 9.58 at the world championships in Berlin.
Thompson-Herah thinks she’ll get another chance like that, too.
“I have more years,” she said. “I’m just 29. I’m not 30. I’m not 40. I’m still working.”
On a sultry night in the near-empty Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, ThompsonHerah started pulling away from her top rival, FraserPryce, early. By the 50meter mark, it was a runaway. She won by .13 seconds, or about three body lengths, a veritable rout in a 100-meter final.
Jackson, a bronze medalist five years ago at 400 meters who moved to the shorter sprints for the Tokyo Olympics, took bronze in this one, as well, in 10.76.
Flo Jo’s old mark of 10.62 came at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, not long after she ran the 10.49 on a breezy day in Indianapolis. For decades, debate has raged about whether the marks are legit, and the longer they held up, the more amazing the records seem.
No Olympic champion had even broken 10.7 since Flo Jo back in the day.