Athletics offered a huge surprise on Saturday evening at the Paris Olympics, in a meeting where the final of the women’s 100 meters, the queen event of world athletics, took place.
There, the young athlete Julien Alfred (23 years old) won the Olympic gold in the 100 meters for Santa Lucia, a Caribbean country with a population of about 180,000 inhabitants, after defeating the big favorite American Sha’Carri Richardson (24 years old), the reigning world champion.
In a Stade de France full despite torrential rain, Alfred broke away from the first meters run and left the favorite Sha'Carri Richardson far behind. Alfred stopped the clock at 10.72, with Richardson finishing in 10.87, while in 3rd place was another American, Mellisa Jefferson, Sha'Carri's training partner, clocking in at 10.92.
It is important to note that the top favorite of the event, Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the 2021 vice-champion and 2016 champion, did not start in the semifinals, despite qualifying from the heats, with the reason for her withdrawal not yet communicated.
Santa Lucia is a small island in the Caribbean, located between Martinique and Barbados, in the Lesser Antilles archipelago, 40 kilometers south of Martinique. This is the first Olympic medal in the history of this microstate, a fact that can also be said for Dominica, another nation in Central America that yesterday at the Games won the gold medal in women's triple jump through Thea LaFond.