U.S. Track Star Sha’Carri Richardson Makes History as the Fastest Woman in the World Transcript

Track star, Sha’Carri Richardson, has made history as the fastest woman in the world. The US sprinter earned a gold medal at the World Championships 100 meter race with a record time of 10.65 seconds. Her victory marks a comeback two years in the making. Richardson was sidelined from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after testing positive for marijuana, and last year she was eliminated in the first round of the 100 meter at nationals.

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ABC News contributor, SiriusXM Radio host, Mike Views, and ESPN Radio co-host Martenzie Johnson, joins me now for more on this. Thank you both for being on. Martenzie, I want to start with you because I know you’ve been watching these championships closely. What does this mean for Team USA and Sha’Carri Richardson’s career? Not only a gold medal, but a new record.

It means that after everything that happened over the last two years from her, the highs of making it to Tokyo, then the lows of immediately being disqualified from Tokyo, that she’s back on top of the track and field world, and that she’s a favorite going into the Olympics next year, and for Team USA with Noah Lyles competing in the 100 and 200 as well, it looks pretty good for them to make somewhat of a comeback against the Jamaicans who have kind of controlled the sprints for the last 10, 15 years.

Mike, given Sha’Carri’s backstory, how big is this comeback?

It’s a big comeback for her, but I love this, that she said that she’s not back, but she’s better, and that’s what she said after she won. She also said that this comeback represents everyone who looks like people like her. Sha’Carri has brought her personality onto the field, Sha’Carri has brought her true story, she’s brought her vulnerability, and she’s been penalized for it. Just as much as America and the media loves a triumphant story, they love also to critique the downfall, a parent downfall of Sha’Carri doing the doping incident. And for her to be able to face that type of adversity, to be able to go out and prepare mentally a comeback after two years of challenges, to come back and win, that’s a huge mountain to overcome, both athletically and from the media onslaught of negative headlines that she was receiving.

Martenzie, what does the road to the Olympics look like now for Sha’Carri and Team USA?

Basically, she just has to… The Diamond League Circuit is still going on, so she can just continue training and doing those sorts of events, but everything’s just really leading up to the Olympic trials next summer before they head off to Paris. She just has to compete and finish as she did at the World Championships this year. But yeah, just keep training, work on her starts. That’s what almost doomed her in, I think, the semis of the World Championships, continue that, and if she’s as any good as she was either a couple days ago or two years ago when she bust in to the scene at the Olympic Trials, the sky is the limit for her. I don’t know if she’s going to be breaking a world record that Flo-Jo has, but she’s getting pretty close at this point, and she’s only 23.

Mike, she’s trending online right now, too. What do you make of the response to this?

I think everyone is extremely happy about it. Sha’Carri has created such taglines, like, “I’m that girl,” on social media, and she has proved that she is that girl, and everyone is celebrating that. Although there was a very mainstream media approach that was heavy and critiquing, there was such a strong cultural support of community who wanted her to win, who wanted to succeed, and who never gave up on her. But I think this victory is going to look at a larger issue of what it comes to looking at and addressing cannabis. Because United States has a patchwork of states where some of it is illegal, some of it is banned, but then also too within the Olympic sports altogether where you saw the dichotomy of the Russian figure skater who was allowed to actually compete to win a medal in Tokyo but had a drug that actually endured, increased your endurance, where THC did not, and so that biases associated with cannabis versus other drugs, I think now we’re going to have a larger conversation at the forefront of what does that look like ahead of the next Olympics.

All right. Well, wishing her the best as she keeps competing. ABC’s contributor, Mike Muse, ESPN Radio co-host, Martenzie Johnson, thank you both.