Two-time Olympic 100m champion Tyus hails higher profile of women in athletics

When Wyomia Tyus became the first runner to win back-to-back 100m Olympic titles, the historic feat passed relatively unnoticed in an era when female athletes – especially black women – received scant recognition.

Now, more than 50 years later, Tyus can only marvel at the spotlight being shone on the female stars of track and field, including the trio of Jamaican sprinters who are dominating the 100m as if it were their private domain.

Few people are more qualified to assess the advancement of female athletes than Tyus, one of the famed ‘Tigerbelle’ runners who unexpectedly won gold in the 100m at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics at the age of 19 and successfully defended her title at the 1968 Mexico City Games.

Tyus is attending the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 and savouring the buzz and awareness surrounding female competitors in all events, not just the sprints.

“It’s such a big thing to be able to see so many people supporting and cheering for the women,” the 76-year-old Tyus said on Tuesday (18), the dedicated ‘Women in the Spotlight’ day of the championships with the schedule featuring predominantly women’s events. “It’s overwhelming in a way. I’m just so happy that the athletes of this day and time, especially the women, can get the recognition they deserve.”

It wasn’t that way when Tyus was competing. A sharecropper’s daughter, she grew up on dairy farm in rural Georgia during the Jim Crow era. Overcoming discrimination, racism and other challenges, Tyus went on to win four Olympic medals (the two in the 100m, and gold and silver in the 4x100m) and set or equal the 100m world record four times.

Tyus was a member of the Tigerbelles, the group of black female runners coached by the legendary Ed Temple at Tennessee State University. From 1950 to 1994, Temple coached 40 black female Olympians who won 23 medals, including 13 gold.

But Tyus competed at a time when female athletes, particularly black female athletes, received little acclaim or media attention. Even today, her record of being the first sprinter – man or woman – to win consecutive Olympic 100m titles is often overlooked.

“I always felt that because we were black women, we never got the credit,” she said. “We would go to a track and there would be maybe five people in the stands cheering for us. It was all family members. Now you have so many people watching and cheering. I see so many young people, girls and boys, really into it. But there’s still more room for growth. Let’s not get comfortable where we are.”

Tyus was in the stands on Monday night when the Jamaican women – as widely expected – swept the medals in the 100m, with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson and Elaine Thompson-Herah going 1-2-3. It was Fraser-Pryce’s fifth world title in the event.

“What the Jamaican women are doing in the 100m is opening up a lot of people’s minds to: ‘Gosh, women are fast, women are good’,” Tyus said. “They put on a show on and off the track, they are really selling the sport. They are about speed. They are showing we can do this.”

Tyus admired the way Fraser-Pryce was able to separate from her Jamaican rivals in the final strides to win in a championship record of 10.67.

“Just the way she pulled away at the end,” she said. “They were even. I could see it. Right at the end she did that little burst and it was over. I don’t think that’s coaching. It’s natural ability and desire.”

Tyus says the Jamaicans have changed the way the world sees the 100m event.

“When people think of the 100m they always think of just men – now they can’t,” she said. “Every time they speak of 100m, they have to talk about women. And when they talk about back-to-back 100m, there are four women who have done it, all black women.”

The others who have won consecutive Olympic titles are US great Gail Devers (1992/1996), Fraser-Pryce (2008/2012) and Thompson-Herah (2016/2020).

Tyus has words of encouragement for the US sprinters trying to keep up with the Jamaicans. Aleia Hobbs finished sixth in the 100m final in 10.92, while national champion Melissa Jefferson was eighth in 11.03.

“They’re good,” Tyus said. “They’ve got some work to do – nothing wrong with that. I think when it comes to the 100m, they aren’t the only ones who are behind.”

A founding member of the Women’s Sports Foundation, Tyus published a memoir in 2018, ‘Tigerbelle: The Wyomia Tyus Story,’ co-authored with Elizabeth Terzakis. She lives in Los Angeles with husband Duane and has five grandchildren.

When Tyus returns to her hometown in Griffin, Georgia, she makes sure to visit Wyomia Tyus Olympic Park. The 164-acre park opened in 1999 and features soccer and baseball fields, pickle ball courts, a fishing pond, picnic areas and nature trails.

“I go there all the time,” she said. “I have a friend who says, ‘Listen to you. You’re always saying your park.’ I say, ‘That’s my name! It has to be my park.’ Just for that to have happened in my hometown, in the south, there can’t be a better honour or legacy.”

Steve Wilson for World Athletics