San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Sprinter stuck in slow lane in return
EUGENE, Ore. — This is where Sha’Carri Richardson’s Olympic dream went up in smoke in June, and she returned Saturday hoping to clear the air, make a statement and restart her career.
She did none of that. Richardson finished ninth in the 100 meters in the Prefontaine Classic, dead last in a shockingly slow 11.14 seconds. America’s sprinting Cinderella showed up in army boots.
But discouraged? Stunned, as were many of the fans here?
“I feel Richardson said with a big smile, an hour after the race and minutes after scratching from the 200 meters without giving a reason.
Then Richardson left the track that has been hard on her this year. At the Olympic trials on this same Hayward Field track, Richardson qualified as the fastest American woman sprinter. Then she tested positive for weed and got bounced off the Olympic team.
Saturday was her chance to show what she could have done in the Olympics, but the Jamaicans who went 1-2-3 in Tokyo came to make sure their Olympic triumphs didn’t get tagged with an asterisk.
This was Sha’Carri vs. the Olympic podium, and she could not have found more supportive fans anywhere. This city calls itself Tracktown, T&F is a religion, and the devil’s weed is as shocking — and as hard to find — as a cappuccino.
Richardson came to run in the ‘Pre’ Classic, America’s premiere meet on the Diamond League pro circuit. The University of Oregon’s track stadium has been rebuilt into a futuristic cathedral, but the
builders didn’t chase away Steve Prefontaine’s ghost. You may have been told that the dynamic and charismatic Pre died in 1975, but for many here, his fatal car crash on a winding road not far from this stadium occurred yesterday. I was unpacking my work bag in the press room when I fell into a conversation with a local track fan who gave an animated — and convincing — defense of Prefontaine, whose blood alcohol reportedly tested well over the legal limit when he crashed his MG. Or did it?
“Pre had been drinking, but he was NOT drunk,” the local said defiantly, providing insider info she obtained long ago from the mouths of nowdead horses.
You see fans here wearing replicas of the famous “STOP PRE” T-shirt that Prefontaine wore ironically on his victory lap here upon qualifying for the 1972 Olympics.
And folks here still love Pre’s sport. They love the athletes, especially the ones who bring something extra to the party, and that’s what Sha’Carri Richardson is all about.
Saturday, the fans came to see Sha’Carri smoke her rivals.
“I think she’s awesome,” said a fan, Joe Clark, who drove 250 miles from Tacoma, Wash., just to watch Richardson run. “I’m a fan of track and field. I know Justin Gatlin (running in the men’s 100), and I know there’s gold medalists here, but I’m a fan of Sha’Carri Richardson. I like her image. I’m an engineer, and a lot of people don’t like my style, but I’m a damn good engineer. She keeps her image, and her image is her image; I really love that about her. If she wins, this is history.”
Richardson emerged this year as a world star. She ran a 10.72 100 meters in April, making her the sixth-fastest woman sprinter of all time. She backed it up at the trials, running a slightly-wind-aided 10.64 and a legit 10.86 into a slight wind.
Richardson, like Prefontaine — a top 5,000-meter runner — offers the sport more than just fresh legs. She has a style — cosmetic (long nails a la Flo-Jo, glittery makeup, blonde locks) and attitudinal. She is confident and defiant of critics, but charmingly, like Pre was.
So far, the two share one other trait: unrealized potential.
Prefontaine fell short at the ’72 Olympics, finishing fourth. Richardson smoked herself out of the Tokyo Games.
She won supporters by humbly accepting a onemonth suspension and vowing to come back strong. There was no reason for her fans to lose faith. Richardson is only 21, and women’s sprinting is for women, not kids.
The other nine women on the 10-fastest-ever list were all older than Richardson’s 21 when they recorded their fastest time. They were, in order, 28 (Florence GriffithJoyner),
29, 34, 29, 22, 24, 36, 24, 25. Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah, who won Saturday in 10.63, is 29. Teammate Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, gold medalist at Tokyo, is 34.
So Richardson has time, but she now has a lot to prove.
“This is one race,” Richardson said in a trackside interview with NBC minutes after the race. “I’m not done. You know what I’m capable of. Count me out if you want to. Talk all the s— you want. Because I’m here to stay. I’m not done. I’m the sixth-fastest woman in this game ever. Can’t nobody ever take that from me.”
That defiant edge was mostly gone an hour later when Richardson, all smiles, stopped to talk with the media.
“In all honesty, I wasn’t focused on my lane and my race,” she said when asked what happened. “But at the end of the day, no excuses. Not at all. It’s time to get back in the lab and do what I need to do.”