Speed queen snubbed after historic sprint

WITH a trail of golden hair and smoke, Elaine Thompson-Herah repeated history and then made a little extra. It wasn’t enough that she defended her 100m Olympic title, for last night she also took down one of the oldest records in her sport.

Thirty-three years. That’s how long Florence Griffith-Joyner’s Olympic mark of 10.62sec had stood, with all the nods and winks that have accompanied it since.

But then we had Thompson-Herah and the race to end all races. Male or female, there has never been one like this. Not where six women go under 11 seconds, three of them clock 10.76sec or lower, and one — the one — went to 10.61sec.

Even before she finished she was pointing at the numbers on the track-side screen. Maybe that cost her a digit starting with five after the decimal; maybe she could have got closer to that more baffling world record of 10.49sec, set by the same woman with the foggy legacy. But Thompson-Herah didn’t need to pick up loose change. She had daylight between herself and her two fellow Jamaicans, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the champion of 2008 and 2012, and Shericka Jackson. They ran like the wind and they were blown away by the second fastest 100m time ever run by a woman.

It was magnificent to the firsttime buyer. It was also about the new line of spikes and a fast track and the warm air; to a few others it will also be about what don’t know and hotter air. That, quite rightly, is the price of sprinting’s past.

In the present, we can reflect on a race that will surely not be beaten in the athletics portion of these Games. The men’s 100m today will have a great deal of uncertainty, but we can already tell from the heats that it will have nothing of the quality, and almost certainly nothing approaching the same depth of rivalry between protagonists.

To observe the frostiness between Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah in the aftermath was to take a guilty pleasure in spiky narratives.

Afterwards, Thompson-Herah, who also won the 200m at Rio 2016, was buzzing, not least in consideration of the fact she recently felt she might miss the Olympics through a lingering achilles injury.

It’s super special,’ said Thompson-Herah, 29. ‘Two months ago I didn’t think I would be here today. I didn’t expect to run this fast, even though I felt great during the rounds. Behind this 10.61 there was a lot of nerves. I said, “You can do this, you’ve been here before, just execute”. But I think I celebrated early too much.’

Possibly, yes, and that extended to a screech that echoed around this empty stadium. While she danced, Fraser-Pryce, a mother of one and winner of 12 world titles at the age of 34, carried something of a frown. She and Thompson-Herah used to be close, and they worked under the coach Stephen Francis together for years.

There are suggestions that Thompson-Herah did not show sufficient deference to the seniors of the group back in the day. Fraser-Pryce was asked about their relationship after their race and the lengthy silence that followed possibly said more than an eventual answer that pointed to a respect for all opponents.

Britain’s Daryll Neita was eighth, her place in the final a sign of her immense progress at the age of 24. She was the sole representative of Team GB in the wake of Dina Asher-Smith’s exit at the semifinal stage.

It was the tale of her bad luck and iffy hamstrings at precisely the wrong time, made more poignant by her tears and belief that she could have won.

There is no denying she suffered rotten luck. Equally, it is just about impossible to believe anyone would have caught Thompson-Herah in that kind of form.