Sha’Carri Richardson lets down her hair before winning 100 meters at U.S. track championships

For the past two years, as a suspension for a failed drug test cost her the spot she earned in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, then failed to advance past the first round at last year’s U.S. track and field championships, it had been Sha’Carri Richardson against herself.

“It just was me,” the sprinter said in May, while visiting Los Angeles, “that was standing in my way.”

This week at Hayward Field, neither Richardson nor any of her 100-meter competitors could stand in her path to a U.S. championship and a berth on her first world championships team, the 23-year-old dominating each of her three heats to transition from a two-year period of unpredictability into two days of utter control over the event she won in 10.82 seconds.

Richardson ripped off the orange wig to reveal braids as her name was called before Friday’s final, drawing startled cheers and laughs inside the stadium, but never cracked her unsmiling expression. She then loaded into the blocks. Behind early, she powered to the championship and kept sprinting another 100 meters, pumping a fist in the air.

Richardson did not speak with reporters after her victory. She had not competed since the Los Angeles Grand Prix in late May, when she convincingly won her preliminary round, then withdrew from the final. Instead of coasting through her first-round race Thursday at the U.S. championships, she sent a message — her time of 10.71 marking a personal best and the fastest by an American woman since Carmelita Jeter ran 10.64 in 2011.

“Focused Sha’Carri is good for Sha’Carri, good for the sport, good for US team, and good for fans,” Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson wrote on Twitter late Thursday.

Richardson had not competed since the Los Angeles Grand Prix in late May, when she convincingly won her preliminary round, then withdrew from the final. Instead of coasting through her first-round race Thursday at the U.S. championships, she sent a message — her time of 10.71 marking a personal best and the fastest by an American woman since Carmelita Jeter ran 10.64 in 2011.

Richardson didn’t let up in her semifinal Friday evening by winning in 10.75. On her way to recover for the final, she tapped Mia Brahe-Pedersen and smiled as she walked by, leaving the teenager who just finished her junior year at Lake Oswego (Ore.) High beaming. They would meet again an hour later in the championship final, with Brahe-Pedersen finishing seventh in 11.08.

Brittany Brown (10.90) and Tamari Davis (10.99) will join Richardson on the U.S. team that will compete at August’s world championships in Hungary.

A U.S. woman has not won the world outdoor 100-meter championship since the late Tori Bowie in 2017, with Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce claiming the two titles since.

Four hours before the final of the men’s 100, a gray cargo van pulled up to the Agate Street curb outside Hayward Field, the University of Oregon’s track and field stadium. Out stepped Noah Lyles, to the cheers of a few dozen fans stopped on the sidewalk, unsure whom they were about to see.

The final brought another surprising reveal. As Lyles and Christian Coleman, two of the most decorated American sprinters of the past decade, watched the scoreboard after the finish to see their place, an unexpected name popped up in first that did not belong to either: Cravont Charleston.

Charleston ran 9.95 to beat Coleman (9.96) and Lyles (10.0), with all three qualifying for the world championships.

Charleston’s most prestigious victory before Friday, he said, had been at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.

The question of who is America’s fastest man is still up for debate, as Fred Kerley, last year’s world champion at 100 meters, is not running the 100 this week because he has a bye into August’s world meet.