First and foremost, let us pay tribute to Elaine Thompson-Herah, winner Saturday of the women’s 100 at the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. This summer, Thompson-Herah has cemented her status as one of the finest female sprinters of all time, if not the best.
In Tokyo, Thompson-Herah completed the two-time Olympic double-double, winning — again — the women’s 100 and 200, just as she did in Rio. Then, on Saturday in Eugene, she ran 10.54 to win the 100.
10.54.
This is the second-fastest 100 ever, behind only Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 10.49 in Indianapolis in 1988. It’s a bunch of other stuff, too — personal best (obviously); world lead (ditto); national, Diamond League and meet record (same) — but the important thing is that it’s only five-hundredths back of FloJo, and ETH, as she is known in track speak, is hot, and there are meets coming up, including in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Thursday, where she is already due to race, and it’s clear she wants 10.48 or lower.
Elaine Thompson-Herah running 10.54 Saturday at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene // Getty Images
Sha’Carri Richardson after finishing last in the same race // Getty Images
That is one story. To be blunt, Elaine Thompson-Herah deserves far more credit than she is getting from the pack of journalistic sheep covering track and field. Way, way, way more.
This is the other, by way of the Sopranos:
Fans may remember Carmine Lupertazzi Junior, better known as Little Carmine. In one epic scene, Little Carmine tells Tony, “You’re at the precipice … of an enormous crossroad.”
This, metaphorically, of course, is the intersection at which Sha’Carri Richardson now stands after finishing — again, in track speak — DFL in Saturday’s much-hyped Pre women’s 100.
Our fragile and broken world could and would be so much better if we recognize — particularly in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd — the import of context and empathy. With these values in mind, it would appear that Sha’Carri Richardson needs significant help on, and more importantly, off the track.
Sparked by Simone Biles, we are only weeks removed from a much-ballyhooed conversation about athlete mental health.
On Monday, the Tokyo winner of the women’s 400 hurdles, Sydney McLaughlin, posted to Instagram an eight-minute video that she had recorded two days after the June U.S. Trials at Hayward in which she tearfully laments the weight of fame and the never-good-enough culture of social media.
“I don’t want fame. I don’t want any of that. it’s toxic,” McLaughlin says. “It makes — it genuinely physically makes me sick. When I got back on social media [after] being gone for three or four weeks before the Trials, I started getting anxiety. Because … you’re looking at what everybody else is doing, what everybody else is posting, and how many followers they have and it physically makes you sick. I don’t want that. I don’t want the fame. I would just like a little bit of respect.”
Backchannel talk in track circles:
Asafa Powell is a Jamaican sprinter well-known for running fast and reliably not winning. Sha’Carri Richardson is already being talked about — when it counts — as doing the Asafa.
That is, she wins when there is no world-class competition. When there is?
Earlier this spring, Richardson went to Britain to run at what’s called the Gateshead meet. There, in a race marked by driving rain and a headwind, she got beaten by British standout Dina Asher-Smith, who ran 11.35; Richardson finished second in 11.44.
In that same Instagram video, McLaughlin also says, “It’s a sick world. There’s so much good in this world. But there’s so much sickness. I pray for healing, man. I really hope that people can, like, see that they don’t have to live in this world of just hate. There’s such a better way.”
There is, and that’s why Sha’Carri Richardson and her people — the team she has around her — would be advised to take a step back.
Track is good stuff, sure.
But there’s a lot — life itself — that’s way more important.
No matter the bravado at the news conference before the race, the I’m-not-going-away with the ultimate professional, Lewis Johnson of NBC, afterward, the plain truth is that Richardson was beaten before that race ever got underway.
That, right there, should be the tripwire. Not how badly she got smoked (yes, intended) in the race itself, which — if you tuned in to watch her — was brutal.
At the elite level, sprinting is 90 percent mental, maybe 10 percent physical. You have to have a lot of mental I-can-beat-you to even line up.
As Dennis Shaver, Richardson’s coach at LSU, where she ran one season of college track, told the New York Times earlier this summer, “Sha’Carri just has got a lot of self-confidence, and the great sprinters have that. You talk a certain talk, but then you back it up.”
For context:
Richardson came to the Trials in June having run 10.72, what was then the sixth-fastest time ever, at a meet in April. At Hayward, in the semifinals, she ran a wind-aided 10.64. In the finals, she won in 10.84.
Then came the famous marijuana DQ.
The DQ made her famous in a way that simply winning track races could not. It made her a crossover star the likes of which the sport had not seen since Usain Bolt. Even TMZ started chronicling her every move. TMZ!
Pundits of all sorts alleged that Richardson had been treated unfairly. Not her. She took the DQ. But people who did not know the first thing about the rules or about track and field made it like she was a victim.
Not even close.
Richardson acknowledged using weed a few days before the Trials final, saying she had been grieving her biological mother.
Seemingly lost was this: no way would a one-time use have been enough to have triggered a positive test. Indeed, the anti-doping rules change for 2021 might well have been called the Chronic (yes, intended). Because the level it now takes is way up there, way beyond a one-night puff.
Why, hypothetically, would someone use marijuana?
Persistent anxiety, maybe?
What happens if — for fear of another positive test — the ability to use weed to blunt anxiety is taken away?
To use that word, blunt, again, in all its manifestations — let’s be:
An 11.14 in a marquee, much-promoted race (no rain, no headwind, fast track like at Hayward) ends up not only six-tenths of a second behind the world-class champion — six-tenths being, at that level, an eternity.
It is, let’s be real, only 13-hundredths of a second ahead of the fastest girls’ high-school time of 2021 — Jasmine Montgomery’s 11.27.
This is where we have to say — crossroads time.
Not just on the track.
More important — off.
Sha’Carri Richardson was never in that race because, it appeared, she was mentally, emotionally out of it before it even started.
That race was, in every way, not just troubling but troublesome. Sha’Carri Richardson needs empathy and support more than she needs clicks on social media.
Because what’s weighing on my mind is Cameron Burrell.
Cameron Burrell, center, at the World Relays in Japan in 2019 // Getty Images
On August 9, Cameron committed suicide by gunshot in a parking garage in Houston.
Cameron was the NCAA sprint champion three years ago. His father, Leroy, is an Olympic sprint champion and the former 100 world record holder. His mother, Michelle Finn-Burrell, is also an Olympic gold medalist in the sprints. His aunt, Dawn, was a 2000 Olympian and the 2001 world indoor long jump champion. Cameron was the 10-time Olympic medalist Carl Lewis’ godson.
We say the mental health of our young people is a priority.
What if Sha’Carri Richardson’s many posts and boasts are cries not for attention — but for help?