Sha'Carri Richardson wins 100m in Doha with fastest time of 2023: 'I found my peace back on the track'
Sha'Carri Richardson is again one of the fastest women in the world. At the prestigious Doha Diamond League on Friday, Richardson ran the 100-meter race in 10.76 seconds, the fastest time in the world this year. She earned first place, marking the biggest international win of her career thus far.
“I found my peace back on the track, and I’m not letting anything or anybody take that anymore,” she said via NBC Sports.
The race field included four American women, including Melissa Jefferson, the 2022 U.S. champion in the 100m, who finished seventh. Coming in behind Richardson was Shericka Jackson of Jamaica, and taking third was Britain's Dina Asher-Smith. Both Jackson and Asher-Smith are recent 200m world champions.
Richardson was expected to make a major impact at the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 after qualifying for the 100m. However, less than a month before the Games were to begin, she was deemed ineligible after testing positive for marijuana. She accepted a one-month suspension after completing a counseling program and did not compete in Tokyo.
Two years later, Richardson has bounced back. Or, as she put it in an interview before Doha: “I’m not back. I’m better.”
Sha'Carri Richardson is the only U.S. woman to break 10.80 seconds since the start of 2017, and she has now done it five times. That's one more than Flo-Jo had in her career and tied for second-most in U.S. history behind Marion Jones' 13 times that haven't been stripped. https://t.co/Qy84iR3KAC
— Nick Zaccardi (@nzaccardi) May 5, 2023
The 2024 Paris Olympics are a little more than a year away, and right now, it seems very possible that we will see Richardson there. But before that happens, she has to focus on the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in July. Finishing in the top three there is the only way she'll be able to qualify for the 100m at the world championships, which take place in August.
