Being the fastest kid in my neighborhood had its perks.
I was constantly showered with praise every time we rode bikes or hooped, I was the envy of my peers on the school bus, and beating the street lights home was just another day in the life. But being the second-fastest woman ever? That’s the type of clout reserved for one person and one person only: Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
From NBC Sports:
Two-time Olympic 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce clocked the world’s fastest women’s 100m in nearly 33 years on Saturday and re-established herself as the favorite for a third gold in Tokyo.
Fraser-Pryce, the Jamaican who won the 2019 World title coming back from childbirth, clocked 10.63 seconds at a meet in Kingston.
For context, that’s “only” the fourth-best time in history, but guess who’s responsible for the other three? Olympic great Florence Griffith Joyner, a.k.a. “Flo Jo”, who clocked in at 10.49, 10.61, and 10.62—all in 1988.
For those who want to see Fraser-Pryce in action, blurt out “Dinner’s ready!” and watch her work:
“Look at God!! I have worked and prayed for this moment,” she wrote on Instagram. “It’s so important to walk in your purpose and hold onto your dreams. When you combine faith with hard work, ANYTHING is possible. Focus on the little things you can control and the bigger picture will come together by itself. Here I am, Zyon’s Mommy, 34yrs old & The Fastest Woman Alive!!!”
13 years after emerging from relative obscurity, 34-year-old Fraser-Pryce is not only still fast as shit, but has blossomed into one of the most decorated sprinters in the history of the sport. And with too many Olympic medals and World Championship titles in her possession to count, expect her reign of terror to continue during next month’s Tokyo Olympics.
“Coming out here today, I never expected I would run 10.6, and I think that’s a good thing because there was no pressure,” she told reporters after making our ancestors proud. “I just wanted to get one run in before national championships, and that’s what I was looking forward to. I’m at a loss for words because 10.6 has been a dream, a goal. I’ve been working so hard, been so patient, and to see it finally unfold, I’m just ecstatic.”
Black, magic, and real. Congrats, Shelly-Ann!
DISCUSSION
That’s great, I like track and field and would be happy to see all records from the 80s and 90s broken. Those decades seem to be prime years for cheaters, before communism and its state-sponsored doping programs fell in the early nineties, and before the BALCO investigations in the USA more than a decade later. I know Flo-Jo was never caught, but there were allegations as well as dramatic personal-best improvements in very short time-spans, and the fact that her record remains so long even as sports training and technology advanced is also suspect. Now if only there was also someone who could erase Marita Koch’s and Jarmila Kratochvilova’s even more suspect records in the 400m and 800m.