Paris Olympics preview: 100m

Women's 100m

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• USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson poised to end Jamaican win streak
• Shericka Jackson could challenge and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is back for fifth Games
• Julien Alfred set on making Olympic history for Saint Lucia

USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson, an exuberant winner of the world title in Budapest last year, looks capable of ending the run of four consecutive Olympic titles in this event for Jamaica.

Richardson won the US trials in 10.71, the fastest time so far this season, to set herself up for a first Olympic appearance. After missing the Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 World Championships, she finally brought her talents to bear upon a global event in Hungary last year. She won the 100m title from out in lane nine – having failed to secure one of the two automatic qualifying places in the semifinals – and ran a championship record of 10.65.

She was followed home by two bemedalled Jamaicans: Shericka Jackson, the two-time world 200m champion, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the defending champion who won the Olympic 100m titles at the 2008 and 2012 Games.

The 30-year-old Jackson earned the right to seek her first individual Olympic title in Paris by winning a 100m and 200m double at last month’s Jamaican trials, clocking 10.84 over the shorter distance and putting herself fifth on this year’s world list.

But on 9 July she pulled up when on the brink of winning the 200m at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial meeting in Szekesfehervar and what should have been a confirmation of her Olympic form turned into an open question.

A month earlier in New York, Jamaica’s two-time Olympic 100m and 200m champion Elaine Thompson-Herah lost the chance of defending either title when she suffered an achilles tendon injury and had to be carried from the track.

At the age of 37, Fraser-Pryce – who also earned Olympic 100m bronze in 2016 and took silver behind Thompson-Herah in Tokyo – earned her Paris place by finishing third in the national trials in 10.94, having clocked 10.91 in the semifinals. Also registered for the 4x100m, Fraser-Pryce, in her fifth Games, will be seeking to add further Olympic medals to her current collection of three golds, four silvers and a bronze.

Second place in the Jamaican trials went to Jackson’s 19-year-old training partner Tia Clayton, who set a PB of 10.86 in the semifinals and pushed her senior rival in the final as she clocked 10.90.

Similarly, Richardson will also be accompanied by training partners in the form of Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha Terry, who respectively clocked a personal best of 10.80 and 10.89 at the trials.

Jefferson’s time put her fourth on this year’s world top list. One place above her on 10.78 is the 23-year-old US-based Julien Alfred, who finished fifth in last year’s world final and became Saint Lucia’s first track and field athlete to earn a global medal in winning the 60m at this year’s World Indoor Championships in Glasgow. Now she is intent on making Olympic history for her nation.

Since clocking her fastest time in Kingston on 1 June, Alfred has demonstrated ideal pre-Olympic form by winning at the Monaco Diamond League in 10.85 and setting a national record of 21.86 when finishing second at the London Diamond League meeting on 20 July.

Multiple world medallist Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith of Cote d’Ivoire and The Gambia’s Gina Mariam Bass Bittaye have also gone under 11 seconds this season, respectively running 10.91 and 10.93.

The European challenge in Paris is likely to be spearheaded by Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith and Switzerland’s Mujinga Kambundji.

After winning world 200m gold and world 100m silver in 2019, Asher-Smith suffered long periods of injury but she began to regain lost heights in 2022 when she took world 200m bronze in Oregon. Now coached by Edrick Floreal in Texas, she recently regained the European 100m title and her season’s best is the 10.96 she ran in the semifinals there.

Kambundji, who retained her European 200m title in Rome, clocked 10.90 at La Chaux-de-Fonds on 14 July.

Italy will be looking to the national record-holder and world indoor 60m bronze medallist Zaynab Dosso, who won the women’s 100m at the national trials in 11.20, while Germany’s hopes will be pinned to the 2022 European champion Gina Luckenkemper, who has a best of 11.04 this year.

Polish fans will be trusting that their indoor specialist Ewa Swoboda can continue to offer evidence of her prowess over 100m, where she took European silver last month.

 

Men's 100m

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• Noah Lyles confident of winning first of the four Olympic titles he is seeking
• Jamaican newcomer Kishane Thompson has world’s fastest time since 2022
• Kenny Bednarek, Letsile Tebogo and Akani Simbine bubbling under

Noah Lyles has already succinctly previewed the men’s 100m at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Asked after his London Diamond League win on 20 July what could be expected of him at the Games, he replied: “I’m going to win. It’s what I always do.”

The 27-year-old from Gainesville, Florida, who secured a third consecutive world 200m title last year as well as a first over 100m, has been talking for a year about the possibility – or should that be probability? – of winning four golds in Paris, thus emulating his illustrious United States forebears Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, who achieved that feat at a single Games in, respectively, 1936 and 1984.

For this natural-born 200m runner the 100m is the event he has worked to master, and it offers him the possibility of earning the first of his four prospective golden moments in the French capital.

At last month’s US trials in Eugene, he won the 100m in 9.83, equalling his personal best. Having skipped the Monaco Diamond League meeting on 12 July, Lyles demonstrated that he is still right where he needs to be in winning over 100m in front of a sell-out 60,000 crowd in London in a PB of 9.81.

But for all Lyles’ boundless confidence, the 100m is far from being a foregone conclusion.

At the US trials he was chased home by the man who claimed Olympic 200m silver ahead of him in Tokyo, Kenny Bednarek, who was second in a PB of 9.87, with third place going to 2022 world champion Fred Kerley, who ran a season’s best of 9.88.

Lyles also faces strong challenges from the two men above him on this year’s world top list, Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson and Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya, and the man one place below him, Jamaica’s Oblique Seville.

Omanyala, the Commonwealth champion, topped the season’s list with his time of 9.79 in the high altitude of his home capital Nairobi. He was shifted down to second place on 28 June, however, when Thompson, a relatively unheralded sprinter who trains at the MVP club under the guidance of Stephen Francis, produced successive personal bests of 9.82 and 9.84 in the heats and semifinals at the Jamaican trials before winning the title in 9.77, the fastest time recorded in the world since 2022.

Seville claimed second in 9.82, matching his personal best to take up fourth place in this year’s top list, while Ackeem Blake finished third in 9.92.

Thompson, who turned 23 on 17 July, followed up his trials performance by winning at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial meeting in 9.91 from two sprinters who will also figure large in Paris: Botswana’s 21-year-old world silver medallist Letsile Tebogo, who clocked 9.99, and Akani Simbine of South Africa, who recorded 10.01.

The latter pair confirmed their form at the London Diamond League as they followed Lyles home, with Simbine finishing second in a season’s best of 9.86 that puts him equal fifth in this season’s listings, and Tebogo equalling the national record of 9.88 he set when earning silver in Budapest.

Also to be factored into the medal equation is the man who has equalled Simbine’s time this season, his 20-year-old compatriot Benjamin Richardson.

Since earning a surprise victory in this event at the Tokyo Olympics, Italy’s Marcell Jacobs has struggled to find similar form amid numerous injuries. But his retention of the European title in Rome last month in 10.02 indicated that he was getting back into the zone.

His victory at the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Turku on 18 June offered further encouragement for Italian fans as he produced a winning time of 9.92, the third fastest of his career and his quickest since 2021.

He was followed home by two other Paris contenders in fellow Italian and European silver medallist Chituru Ali, who ran his first sub-10 in clocking 9.96, and Canada’s 29-year-old Olympic 200m champion Andre De Grasse, who recorded a season’s best of 10.00.

Britain, meanwhile, will be looking to 22-year-old Louie Hinchliffe, coached by multiple Olympic champion Carl Lewis, who won this year’s NCAA title in 9.95 before taking first place in the chilly, rainswept British trials in 10.18.

There will be British expectations too for world bronze medallist Zharnel Hughes, who was given an exemption from the national trials after injuring a hamstring competing in Jamaica, and for 23-year-old Jeremiah Azu, who won European bronze two years ago.

Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics