FASTER THAN FLO JO
Thompson-Herah beats Fraser-Pryce to win 100m in Olympic record as Jamaicans sweep sprint final
TOKYO: Elaine Thompson-Herah broke Florence Griffith Joyner’s 33-year-old Olympic record in the women’s 100 metres, pointing at the scoreboard even before crossing the line in 10.61 seconds on Saturday to defend her title and lead a Jamaican sweep of the medals.
Griffith Joyner set the old record of 10.62s at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Thompson-Herah beat her top rival, Shelly-Ann FraserPryce, by 0.13s. Shericka Jackson, who moved to the shorter sprints for the Tokyo Olympics, won bronze in 10.76s.
No Olympic champion had broken 10.7s since Flo Jo back in the day. Thompson-Herah wasn’t sure she would either as she approached the finish. But “I knew that I won,” she said.
“The pointing, I don’t know what it means. To show that I was clear,” she said.
This was the first Jamaican sweep of the medals since the women did it at the 2008 Beijing Games – a feat somewhat overshadowed that week by the record-setting performance by Usain
Bolt.
But really, there is no overlooking the
Jamaican women, who actually have a longer history of sprint success than the men in the island country. Fraser-Pryce finished on top in that 2008 race, and completed her Olympic set in the 100m, where she now has two gold medals (2008, 2012), a silver and a bronze (2016). ThompsonHerah also won gold in 2016 Rio.
Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah are headed for a possible rematch in the 200m, where Thompson-Herah is also the defending champion.
The 100m final had been shaping up as a fast race for days, if not months. In June, Fraser-Pryce ran the fourth-fastest time in history at 10.63s. And when the sprinters arrived in Japan, they discovered a fast track at Olympic Stadium. In the semi-finals earlier on Saturday, the Jamaicans all cracked 10.8s to get on the list of the 10 best times in Olympic history.
Then, it was ThompsonHerah’s turn to make history.
Flo Jo’s records are older than virtually every sprinter in the women’s game, save FraserPryce, who was born about 18 months before the American set the marks. Griffith Joyner’s world record, the 10.49s, is still out there, and no other woman has ever broken 10.6s.
At 34, and having had time out to have a baby, Fraser-Pryce came in thinking it could be her, and when she crossed the line in second, she flashed a look of disbelief, then stood stone-faced with her hands on her hips looking at the scoreboard.
Thompson-Herah wasn’t surprised. She was looking left toward the clock as she approached the line. She was pointing even before she got there, conjuring memories of Bolt, who celebrated with 10m to go when he ran 9.69s to break the men’s world record in 2008. “I think I could have gone faster if I wasn’t pointing and celebrating, really,” Thompson-Herah said. “But to show you that there’s more in store. Hopefully one day I can unleash that time.”
Thompson-Herah said she had not expected to challenge for the Olympic title earlier this year, when she was bothered by a niggling Achilles injury.
The women’s 100m shaped up as potentially the best sprint race of the Olympics, ahead of the Bolt-less men’s sprint. As if to accentuate that point, the favorite in the men’s race, American sprinter Trayvon Bromell, finished fourt.
And Thompson-Herah found herself in a spot she was familiar with — first at the Olympics — but with a time no woman had ever seen on this stage: 10.61.