Sink or Swim: Elaine Thompson-Herah’s consequential 2024 campaign
The double sprint Olympic champion’s coaching partnership with husband Derron can still have the payoff she wants. But time is running out to prove doubters wrong.
When double sprint Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah decided to part ways with MVP Track Club and head coach Stephen Francis after the best season of her career in 2021 to be trained by her husband Derron, the reaction was divisive. It was a move that was either going to further carve her name into stone as one of the best women’s sprinters ever and even achieve legendary status or a costly error that would see the rest of her prime years be wasted. There is no in-between.
Make no mistake, Thompson-Herah can retire now and still be regarded as one of the best in history. Her resume speaks for itself and anyone who disagrees otherwise is fooling themselves. Four individual Olympic gold medals(the first woman to go back to back in the 100m and 200m), the fastest woman alive over 100m (10.54), the third fastest 200m runner in history (21.53).
But as year three of the Derron and Elaine coaching partnership approaches and the Paris Olympics now the focus, we have officially entered sink-or-swim territory. Thompson-Herah’s 2023 season couldn’t have been any worse health-wise as a combination of injuries, including the nagging Achilles and a shin splint ruled her out for two months. She returned to start her 100m campaign on June 24, two weeks before the national championships. She wouldn’t make the individual 100m team and would need treatment before she got into shape. So she engaged the services of former MVP coach Shanikie Osbourne to join the team to help her complete her season temporarily.
“It was something in my mind for a year and a half now. I wanted her [Osbourne] to come on the team and I said after the trials ‘Why not call her to come and be a part of the team now, feel her out now before we start the 2024 season’. I think working with her now to the end of the season will give me more time to make a decision to see if I really want to stick with her for the rest of the years to come,” Thompson Herah said in August 2023.
She would get her chance at a reset, making the World Championship relay pool and after a good showing on the 4x100m relay team in Budapest, Osbourne helped Thompson-Herah to four strong races to close the season. That was highlighted by a season’s best time of 10.79 seconds at the Diamond League Final in Eugene, Oregon in September. Signs of form that saw her become the fastest woman alive in 2021 (10.54) were manifesting.
That temporary arrangement was terminated as news broke on Monday that they have parted ways, with reported speculation being that they could not agree to terms on remuneration. That speculation was confirmed in a statement released on Wednesday by her management team detailing that the “package proposed by the former coach; by any measure of what is the norm for such services was ‘extremely excessive and without any flexibility to negotiate by the other party”.
Quality coaches don’t come cheap and the main question will be why and by what standard was the initial offer considered “extremely excessive”. Reportedly, according to Hitz 92 Sports Grill Host Oral Tracey on his YouTube channel, Thompson-Herah signed off on the remuneration package but was overruled by her husband. Puzzling still, that reportedly from Tracey that the package was less than what was demanded when she was at MVP with Stephen Francis. If that is the case, not only is it a grave unforced error but the latest spoke in the wheel of a coaching partnership that has, so far, been difficult at best to launch.
Now Thompson-Herah’s team must chart another course to get her into a position to get her back to her best.
That team has one constant. Even when Osbourne joined after the National Championships, Thompson-Herah emphasised that Derron was and will always have a pivotal role in the programme as head coach. Since his two years with Thompson-Herah, there hasn’t been much improvement.
Would Thompson-Herah with a full season working with Osbourne and Herah be the catalyst for a return to form? We will never know now. But the signs were encouraging in not only helping her to get back to fitness but finishing the 2023 season strong with that 10.79, with a possibility of getting in the low 10.70 if the season went longer.
Repeating the success of 2021 when she retained the sprint double title at the Tokyo Olympics and became untouchable in the 100m when she clocked that 10.54 time at the Diamond League in Eugene was always going to be difficult. She had difficulties after she claimed the Olympic 100m and 200m crowns at the Rio Olympics in 2016. The 2019 World Championships saw the flare-up of what would now be nagging Achilles issues. Managing that as well as the programme under Francis in 2021 saw her ascend to break Florence Griffth Joyner’s Olympic 100m record and complete a season where she cemented herself as one of the best in the business and in the history books of women sprinting.
After that season, they parted ways despite comments from Thompson-Herah trying to downplay any split claiming that it was for her personal growth.
Track Analyst Hubert Lawrence said at the time that if this coaching partnership between Thompson-Herah and her husband was going to work it would need time. I concurred. Rome wasn’t built in a day after all.
But at the very least, you wanted to see some sort of milestones that could inspire confidence. That hasn’t manifested as yet although it was a decent enough start. The first year saw Thompson-Herah manage injuries but had a season’s best of 10.79, claiming her first individual world championship medal in the 100m in July 2022 when she took bronze as part of a podium sweep. She would add silver in the 4x100m relay and claim the sprint double at the Commonwealth Games the following month, all as part of her first season in a major sponsorship deal with Puma. Judging whether the move would be a success would not be determined by what happened in 2022, but in Budapest (this year’s World Championships), Paris (2024 Olympics), and Tokyo (2025 World Championships).
Husband and wife teams are not anomalies. Those partnerships have often yielded great rewards once the right factors are present. A chief example of this is multiple world championship silver medalist triple jumper Shanieka Ricketts and her husband Kerry-Lee Ricketts. Ricketts not only has the ability but the success and the body of work that speaks for itself.
Jumping ship from MVP is not a death sentence either. You thrive or struggle depending on the environment that you are in. Five-time world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce left MVP for Reynaldo Walcott in 2021 and she only got faster than even she thought was possible. Walcott was also at MVP and was coaching at the high school level with St Elizabeth Techincal High School. But he has evolved into one of the best coaches in the country and what he is building at Elite Performance is rivaling MVP and other clubs. Others have left and thrived in different environments.
Leaving MVP after the season that Thompson-Herah had was not the main issue, although it would have raised eyebrows because of the success generated. It was who would be tasked to foster the environment for success with a concrete plan with a coach who had the cache and experience of being able to guide world-class talent.
For Derron, who also coached at the high school level with St Jago and was a member of the Cameron Blazers Track club set-up, his taking over of his wife’s training was met with scepticism among the track and field community. The recent results and obstacles have not helped water down the intense criticisms of the move or sow further doubts as to whether he is capable of guiding Thompson-Herah to the form that made her untouchable in 2021. She will have targets to meet with that deal with Puma which will have financial implications but separate and apart from that will have legacy implications too. And with Osbourne no longer a part of the immediate future, what will be the battle plan to get Thompson-Herah in fighting shape to defend her titles next summer in Paris?
Naturally, the key component is for her to remain healthy. The injury struggles last year didn’t help matters, starting her 100m slate two weeks before the National Championships. It was always a recipe for disaster. A healthy Elaine in good form is difficult to beat on the circuit. She has the chance to become the second athlete to win three consecutive 100m Olympic titles, putting her in legendary status. Repeating the feat in the 200m will be a difficult task. Back to Back-to-back world champion Shericka Jackson has made the half-lap event her own in her third year, becoming the fastest woman alive at the distance, smashing 21.41 last August. Thompson-Herah’s personal best is 21.53 and anyone who is beating Jackson has to break Florence Griffth Joyner’s 21.34 world record mark in the process.
When asked about the struggles this year, Thompson-Herah was as determined as ever as to how she would battle back.
“I think when you are a true champion, you’re not going to have everything summed up the way you want. And if I was winning, winning, maybe I would be bored. I wouldn’t have anything to work on,” Thompson Herah said.
“But the fact that I have so many hurdles and obstacles to fight, I will keep fighting because I do believe that I am the greatest sprinter of all time. And until it’s proven, I will do whatever I can to repeat whatever I have done before.”
She will aim to do it with Derron until the wheels fall off. Francis has ruled out any path for her to come back to MVP hinting that the split was less than amicable. Not that Thompson-Herah wants any part of a return to MVP anyway.
But 2024 will be a consequential year for Thompson-Herah which makes the Osbourne decision all the more agonising. There will be little to no excuses as to what happens in 2024 because the Olympics has been the stage that has defined Thompson-Herah and where she has produced her best.
Derron could still turn it around if there is an openness to do things differently programme-wise, whether that is bringing on a quality coach and partnering together to get the best out of Thompson-Herah. Or even to evolve his methods to get the best out of her. He has had time to see what works and what doesn't.
There is still time for the naysayers to be proven wrong and if she even gets close to her 2021 form then her decision would be justified. But we all have to live with the consequences of our choices. She doesn’t have long left in her prime years where she could have a real shot at talking Griffth-Joyner’s 10.49 world record. Should she not reach that 2021 pinnacle, the questions will not be about her place in history as one of the best, but how more transcendent she could have been had she made a different choice.
