Sha’Carri Richardson Calls B.S. on Team USA’s Claims About Athlete Support Fund

As Paris gears up to host the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, Team USA hopes people will reach into their hearts and their wallets to help the country’s top athletes this holiday season. But before you hit that donate button, American track and field star Sha’Carri Richardson wants you to know that the athletes the fund claims to take care of aren’t supported at all.

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A Nov. 24 Instagram ad for the Team USA Fund is captioned, “100% of Donations to the Team USA Fund goes to the athletes and the high performance programming that supports them.”

Richardson didn’t hold back in an Instagram story this week, captioning the post, “Do not donate. The athletes that need this money don’t see it.”

She wasn’t the only one calling B.S. on the ad’s claims. The comment section of the Team USA ad lit up with skeptics questioning the real destination of the donations.

Comments like “I heard they don’t get retirement and these funds don’t go to athletes but the executive get paid BIG Bucks. Look it up.”, ”Big 🧢 the athletes don’t see one penny of these funds!!” and “Heard the athletes who need it most don’t see a dime!!!” were some of the nicer posts in the thread.

Despite the controversy, Richardson, who was sidelined at the 2016 Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for THC, is ready for a second chance in Paris. She showed out at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, winning gold in the 100m, bronze in the 200m, and anchoring the first place women’s 4 x 100m relay team.

After receiving the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Athlete of the Year Award at the USA Track and Field’s Night of Legends ceremony on Dec. 3, Richardson told the audience that this is her time to shine.

“With the God that I serve, everything happens when it’s supposed to happen. So when I stand here today as the world champion, that’s because now was the time for that to happen. Now is the most impactful it would be, the most powerful it would be, and the most sincere it would be,” she said in her acceptance speech.