Sha'Carri Richardson: Lane nine

Budapest, August 21, 2023. World Championships, women's 100 final. Sha'Carri Richardson is out in lane nine, as far from the middle of the track as you can get, and the bookmakers have her at 5-1. On her inside were Jamaica's Shericka Jackson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the reigning world champion. She ran 10.65. Championship record. World champion.

She looked stunned at the line. Then she told the track announcer, "I'm here, I told y'all." Two years earlier, she had won her way onto the Olympic team and never got to run in Tokyo.

WatchLane nine: the 2023 world 100m finalWorld Athletics

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Big Momma

Start in Dallas. Her grandmother, Betty Harp, Big Momma to the family, has been there since Sha'Carri was a little girl. At Big Momma's house there were medals on display, won by her aunt, Shayaria, a school sprint star. Those medals inspired her.

She ran at Dallas Carter High School, then went to LSU. She stayed one season, and one season was enough. On June 8, 2019, at the NCAA Championships in Austin, the freshman won the 100 in 10.75. That broke Dawn Sowell's collegiate record of 10.78, set for LSU 30 years earlier, and it was a world under-20 record.

Here is the part track people still bring up. Less than 50 minutes later she ran the 200 in 22.17 and finished second by one hundredth. That was another under-20 world record, and it took down Allyson Felix's mark. The next week she turned pro.

Thirty days

June 19, 2021, Hayward Field, Eugene. Olympic Trials, 100 final. She was 21, with that orange hair everybody remembers, and she won in 10.86. Right after the race she ran up into the stands and found her grandmother, and they held on to each other. On TODAY a few days later she said that hug felt almost better than the medal.

"If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't even have made it to that moment."

Sha'Carri Richardson, on her grandmother Betty Harp, to NBC's TODAY, June 2021

What almost nobody in that stadium knew: about a week before the trials, her biological mother had died. She told NBC Sports about it after her win. Later she said the news sent her into a state of emotional panic.

Then the test came back. She had tested positive at the trials for a chemical found in marijuana. She said she used it to cope with her mother's death. She accepted a 30-day suspension, cut down from three months because she agreed to a counseling program, and her trials win was erased. Her place in the Olympic 100 went to someone else.

The suspension ran through July 27, so the relay was still possible. On July 6, USA Track and Field said she would not be added to the relay pool, and that was it. She missed the Tokyo Olympics entirely.

She did not hide. On July 2 she sat down on TODAY and owned it. She said she knew what she did. She said she wanted to take responsibility for her actions. She apologized to the people who had supported her. And she asked for one thing.

"Don't judge me because I am human. I'm you, I just happen to run a little faster."

Sha'Carri Richardson, on NBC's TODAY, July 2, 2021

Not done

Her first race back was the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene that August, against the three Jamaicans who had swept the Olympic 100 in Tokyo. Elaine Thompson-Herah won in 10.54. Richardson was ninth, last, in 11.14. She told NBC it was one race, and that she was not done.

2022 was rougher. At the U.S. Championships in Eugene in June, she ran 11.31 in the first round of the 100, finished fifth in her heat and did not make the semifinals. Three days later she missed the 200 final too. No world championships team. She told reporters the season was not done and that her journey was hers.

July 7, 2023, back at Hayward Field, the U.S. Championships 100 final. They introduced her on the start line, and she pulled off her orange wig and threw it on the track behind her. She had run 10.71 in the first round, the fastest time in the world that year to that point. In the final she ran 10.82 and won the U.S. title. She was 23. In her TV interview afterward, she said she was ready, mentally, physically and emotionally.

"I'm not back, I'm better."

Sha'Carri Richardson, in a TV interview after winning the U.S. 100m title in Eugene, July 7, 2023, as reported by the Associated Press

Seventy minutes

Now back to Budapest, because the final was only half of it. Her semifinal was the one people called the semifinal of death: Jackson and Marie-Josée Ta Lou in the same race, and only the top two through automatically. She got out badly. She was seventh, rallied to third in 10.84, and went through on time, the fastest of everyone outside the automatic places. That is how she ended up in lane nine for the final.

About 70 minutes later, she won the whole thing. Jackson was second, seven hundredths back. Fraser-Pryce was third. Richardson was the first American to win the world 100 since Tori Bowie in 2017, and she stopped Fraser-Pryce from tying Sergey Bubka's record of six world titles in one individual event.

She was not finished in Budapest. In the 200 final she took bronze behind Jackson. Then she anchored the 4x100. Tamari Davis, Twanisha Terry and Gabby Thomas had her about two meters clear by the time the stick reached her, and she brought it home in 41.03, a championship record. Two golds and a bronze from the meet.

Sha’Carri Richardson running in Budapest, 2023 — Richardson in the 200m heats at the World Championships in Budapest, August 2023.Photo: Filip Bossuyt / CC BY 2.0

Ninety meters

The Olympic Trials came back to Hayward Field in June 2024, and this time nobody took it away. On June 22 she won the 100 in 10.71. Afterward she said she felt every chapter she had been through had prepared her for that moment.

August 3, 2024, Stade de France. The rain came down about ten minutes before the women's 100 final. Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia got out fast and ran 10.72, and Richardson could not close the gap. She took silver in 10.87, her first Olympic medal, with teammate Melissa Jefferson third.

Six days later, the relay. Jefferson led off, Terry ran second, Thomas ran third, Richardson anchored. The exchange to Thomas was a little slow, and that carried into the last handoff. Richardson had to ease up to make sure she had the stick. With 90 meters to go she was fourth.

She passed France right away, caught Germany by 60 meters and ran down Britain. The United States won in 41.78, seven hundredths ahead. Three years after she was left off the relay for Tokyo, Sha'Carri Richardson had her first Olympic gold medal, and she won it on the anchor leg.

Back to Tokyo

2025 started with an injury in February, and it hung over most of her year. She still went to the World Championships as the defending 100 champion, and they were in Tokyo, in the stadium that had been the centerpiece of the 2021 Olympics, the Games she missed. She won her first round heat in 11.03, her best of the year, and said plainly that it was not the golden year she had pictured. In the final on September 14, she was fifth.

A week later, on September 21, the 4x100 final went off in torrential rain. Jefferson-Wooden led off, with Terry and Kayla White in the middle, and Richardson ran the anchor leg. The United States won in 41.75. Four years late, she left Tokyo with a gold medal.

Playing rabbit

2026 started somewhere nobody expected: a grass track in a country town in Australia. The Stawell Gift is a 120 meter handicap race, and the faster you are, the further back you start. Richardson ran off scratch, from the very back. In her heat she gave the front markers 10 meters. She had called it glorified practice.

On Easter Monday, April 6, she ran them all down in 13.15, the fastest time in the history of the women's race. She held off 19-year-old Charlotte Nielsen, who ran 13.19, and became only the third woman to win it off scratch.

"It felt like being a kid again, playing tag, like playing rabbit."

Sha'Carri Richardson, to the Seven Network after her Stawell Gift heat, April 4, 2026, as reported by Australian Associated Press

Back home, the season came together. She opened her 100 season on June 14 at the LA Grand Prix and won in 10.99, ahead of her training partner Kayla White. Later in June she ran 10.77, the fastest by an American that year at the time. At the Prefontaine Classic in early July, she lost to Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, who trains in the same group, by one hundredth: 10.78 to 10.79.

Then New York, July 24, the U.S. Championships at Icahn Stadium. She got out slow, came on hard and won in 10.77, thirteen hundredths clear of White. Her third national title in the 100.

Late summer, the wins were harder to come by. Richardson tied for third in Silesia in August and third at the Diamond League final in Brussels in September. On September 12 she lined up in the 100 final at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship, in the same Budapest stadium where she had won the world title three years earlier. She ran 10.73 in her semifinal, then closed fast in the final for third in 10.76, behind Jefferson-Wooden and Alfred.

She is 26 now. Five years after the summer she had to stand in front of the world and explain herself, she has a world 100 title, three world championship golds in all, an Olympic gold, an Olympic silver and three national 100 titles, and she is still lining up against the fastest women on earth. In New York, the night she won her third title, this is what she said.

"It feels phenomenal to be back in a better place: healthy mentally, physically, emotionally."

Sha'Carri Richardson, to NBC Sports after winning the U.S. 100m title in New York, July 24, 2026, as reported by Just Women's Sports

GAMECHANGER^™

Reporting draws on the Associated Press, NBC's TODAY, NBC Sports, NBC News, CBS News, World Athletics, Olympics.com, Track & Field News, LSU Athletics, The Athletic, AFP, Canadian Running, Rolling Stone, theGrio, Australian Associated Press, The Nightly, Marathon Handbook and Just Women's Sports.

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