Women’s Sprints Preview
100m
My pick: Sha’Carri Richardson
Sha’Carri Richardson missed the last Olympics after testing positive for a performance diminishing drug. Not enhancing. Diminishing. Richardson, who had just won the 2021 US 100m Olympic trials, was suspended for smoking marijuana following the death of her mother, despite the substance being legal in Oregon and not enhancing athletic performance. Fast-forward three years and she’s the back-to-back US 100m champion, the reigning 100m world champion, and the fastest woman of the year. Richardson is also the most famous track and field athlete in the world right now and the clear favourite to win the Olympic 100m title. Not a bad redemption story at all.
Sha’Carri Richardson on the latest cover of Vogue
The Challengers
Julien Alfred
The Netflix cameras would be salivating over a Richardson win, but the success of SPRINT probably isn’t too high up on Julien Alfred’s list of concerns. The St Lucian is looking to become the first athlete from her country to win an Olympic medal, and her positions at third on the 2024 rankings in the 100m and 200m certainly suggest she’s capable of getting it done. Alfred’s explosive start took her to the 60m World Indoor title earlier this year, and her runner-up performance in the 200m at the London Diamond League last week proved that she has plenty of speed endurance to tap into over the closing stages of a race. Look for her to be in the medal mix in the 100m and 200m in Paris.
Shericka Jackson
Listing Shericka Jackson as a 100m challenger and leaving her out of my 200m preview feels weird. The Jamaican dominated the 200m final at last year’s World Championships, winning by almost half a second to become the fastest woman in history (alright fine, second fastest, but are we really still pretending FloJo’s world records are legit?), before rounding out her undefeated season with three consecutive sub-22 performances.
All that considered, 2024 should say sorry to Ms. Jackson (and I to my readers). Jackson hobbled over the line in her most recent race in 36.29 seconds, although she has since assured us that she’s fine, and training videos do indicate that this is true. However, in all her 2024 races before that she only averaged 22.69 seconds, and her season’s best of 22.29 is more than two-tenths slower than her slowest time of 2023. Jamaica and the USA have been locked in a sprinting supremacy tug of war for most of the 21st century, but the women’s 200m seems to have lost all competitiveness: Jackson, the fastest Jamaican of the year, has 13 Americans in front of her.
But this is not a 200m preview. Second in Budapest last year, Jackson is no slouch over 100m. Her 10.84-second victory at the Jamaican Championships is the fifth fastest time of the year, and her 10.65-second personal best is the fifth fastest of all time. Her incredible medal count proves she has no problem contending the rounds at a championship level, so if she can get to the final in one piece, expect her to be a serious contender.
100m Hurdles
My pick: I really don’t know
Tobi Amusan, Jasmine Comacho-Quinn, Devynne Charlton, Danielle Williams, Masai Russell, Ackera Nugent, and Cyrena Samba-Mayela. You may as well put these names in a hat and draw one at random because there really is no way to separate these women. They have all won and lost against each other this year, with nobody emerging as a clear favourite or even a clear medallist.
Let’s take a look at each of their most impressive accolades:
Amusan: Current world record holder
Camacho-Quinn: Reigning Olympic Champion
Charlton: Reigning World Indoor Champion
Williams: Reigning World Outdoor Champion
Russell: Fastest woman in the world this year, reigning American Champion
Nugent: Second-fastest woman in the world this year, reigning Jamaican Champion
Samba-Mayela: Third-fastest woman in the world this year, reigning European Champion
If you look at their season’s bests, the slowest and fastest women in this list are separated by less than a quarter of a second. Once you adjust for wind, that gap shrinks further still.
If you are itching for a slightly more sophisticated predictive tool than names in a hat, here’s all I can recommend:
If you think times are what matters, go with Amusan or Russell.
If you think peaking into a competition is most important, go with Camacho-Quinn or Nugent.
If you think championship experience trumps all, go with Charlton or Williams.
If you’re French, go with Samba-Mayela.
200m
My pick: Gabby Thomas
2024 has not been kind to most of the usual suspects in the women’s 200m, but one athlete who is having an amazing season is Gabby Thomas. The American has won her last five 200m races, is fourth on the all-time list, and has the three fastest times of 2024. She is the Olympic bronze medallist from Tokyo and the world silver medallist from Budapest, but with a diminished Shericka Jackson the only other woman from those two podiums to qualify for Paris, Thomas shouldn’t be too worried. Oddsmakers have her winning gold at 3:1, but they also have Yomif Kejelcha as one of the favourites to win the men’s 5000m and he isn’t even racing that event, so I wouldn’t read too much into their predictions. Based on her season so far, I don’t see anyone getting past Thomas.
The Challengers
McKenzie Long
McKenzie Long joins Thomas as the only other woman competing in the 200m at the Olympics to have broken 22 seconds more than once this year (Sha’Carri Richardson has also done it multiple times, but she finished fourth at the US Olympic trials and so will only contest the 100m).
Long finished third at the trials to make her first American team after a long (pun intended) NCAA season. Students often struggle at global championships because the college season is so taxing: case in point, Long has raced 35 times this year, more than twice as much as any of the professionals in the field. Despite this, she has looked sharp all season and is showing no signs of slowing down, so it’s hard to say exactly how she’ll go in Paris. She might stand on the podium, or she might fail to make the final; only time will tell. However, if she does get to the final, look for her to be one of the first women out of the blocks.
Julien Alfred
See the 100m for my preview of Julien Alfred.
Gabby Thomas leads Julien Alfred over the line in the 200m at the London Diamond League
400m
My pick: Marileidy Paulino
Reigning World Champion, reigning Olympic silver medallist, undefeated in 2024: there’s lots to like about Marileidy Paulino. Her personal best of 48.76 is fast – the 12th fastest in history, to be precise – but it might take something even quicker to claim the title in Paris. Paulino is only the seventh fastest in the world this year, and while her championship experience will be valuable, it will mean nothing if she can’t get around the track quickly enough. She’s still my favourite for the Olympic gold, but this is one of my most tentative picks.
The Challengers
Nickisha Pryce
Nickisha Pryce is in a similar position to McKenzie Long. She too is coming off a long collegiate season, but unlike Long, Pryce is still getting faster. The Jamaican set the world lead of 48.57 seconds at the London Diamond League last week and, according to her coach, is yet to peak. If this is true, then Pryce is capable of 48-low and becomes the obvious favourite. The only reason I have some doubts is because the rest of her historically fast Arkansas peers have struggled to perform at their national trials, with the two Americans failing to make the team. Pryce is slightly stronger than her college teammates, but whether she can translate that to international success remains to be seen.
Natalia Kaczmarek
“Past performance does not guarantee future results.”
If it did, Paris would have already engraved Natalia Kaczmarek’s name on the Olympic silver medal. Kaczmarek is the reigning world championship silver medallist, the second-fastest in the world this year, and has come second in all her 2024 Diamond League appearances. She’s one of the most consistent runners in the world at the moment, and while she probably won’t take home gold, there’s a good chance she will feature on the podium when all is said and done.
Nickisha Pryce (M) beats Natalia Kaczmarek (R) in the 400m at the London Diamond League
400m Hurdles
My pick: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
The word ‘GOAT’ is thrown around too much in this sport, but at just 24, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is already worthy of that title. The two-time Olympic champion and three-time world champion hasn’t lost a 400m hurdles race in the last five years, and she hasn’t lost anything this year: from the 100m hurdles, to the flat 200m, to her main event, the American has been untouchable. Those victories include beating Gabby Thomas (2024 US 200m champion) in a 200m, Kendall Ellis (2024 US 400m champion) in a 400m, and most recently, breaking her own world record in the 400m hurdles in a time that was faster than the Olympic standard for the flat 400m.
But the year is not over, and that world record of 50.65 seconds is not safe. McLaughlin-Levrone has run a personal best in every global final she has been in, and in her last two major championship years has run a world record at the US national trials before breaking it again in the global final.
To give you an idea of just how dominant this woman is, take a look at the world record progression.
Women’s 400m hurdles world record progression before 2020:
1993: Sally Gunnell, 52.74
1995: Kim Batten, 52.61
2003: Yuliya Pechonkina, 52.34
2019: Dalilah Muhammad, 52.20
2019: Dalilah Muhammad, 52.16
Women’s 400m hurdles world record progression after 2020:
2021: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, 51.90
2021: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, 51.46
2022: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, 51.41
2022: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, 50.68
2024: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, 50.65
McLaughlin-Levrone is the greatest sprinter of this generation, and her career is quickly turning into a collection of mind-boggling stats. She is the overwhelming favourite in Paris and will probably still be the overwhelming favourite come the 2028 Olympics.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone breaks her 400m hurdles world record at the 2024 U.S. Olympic trials
The Challengers
Femke Bol
It’s difficult to find a list of the most overshadowed athletes in history: those that are the second greatest of all time but also the second greatest of their generation. Then again, that’s kind of the point.
If someone did make such a list, Femke Bol would top it. The Dutchwoman has eight of the top twenty fastest times in history and recently joined McLaughlin-Levrone as the only other woman to have broken 51 seconds for the 400m hurdles.
Bol and McLaughlin-Levrone have only met twice in their career, and those clashes are the only two 400m hurdles races Bol has lost in the last five years. Unfortunately for the Dutchwoman, the average margin of those two losses is well over a second, which is an eternity in sprinting. I can’t see it getting much closer in Paris, which means Bol will likely have to settle for silver again.
Femke Bol (L) and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (R) at the Tokyo Olympics
You can access all start lists for the 2024 Paris Olympics here.