No turning back: We are about to find out how ready (or not) Olympic champion Elaine Thompson Herah is as her consequential 2024 season begins.
You can only hold your cards close for so long. At some point, you are going to have to play a hand and see if you hit paydirt.
After the most important coaching change in her career and months of training, reigning double-double sprint Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah will make her season debut tomorrow in the 100m at the Diamond League Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon. It finally starts the process that she hopes will end in a historic third consecutive Olympic 100m title.
She has been keeping it close to the vest as her anticipated debut earlier in April at the Bermuda Grand Prix was not confirmed and everyone started to be up in arms.
Subsequently fences were ‘peeped’ over with concerns about how she will start the season.
She will open against the reigning world champion Sha’ Carri Richardson who will open her 100m campaign in Eugene, a place that brings back memories that have defined both women.
Thompson-Herah finished third in the 100m Diamond League final last year as her injury-plagued season saw her miss out on a 100m slot at the World Championships in Budapest last August. But she now returns to the scene of the best performance of her career when she clocked that legendary 10.54 second time three years ago, becoming the fastest-living woman at the distance. This was on the back of a season where she won back-to-back Olympic 100m and 200m titles in Tokyo.
Richardson's last performance on the Eugene track was that same Diamond League final last September when she finished fourth in a modest 10.80. But in that same 100m race three years ago where Thompson-Herah made history and led another Jamaican sweep, Richardson finished last. Mind you, it was her first race after serving her one-month suspension for testing positive for a prohibited substance. And her disposition did not attract many admirers, especially from a Jamaican perspective.
Much has changed in those three years. Thompson-Herah left Stephen Francis and MVP track club after that 2021 season to work with her husband Derron. It has been a mixed bag as she managed to get bronze at the 2022 World Championships but missed out on last year’s individual 100m event as she could not recover from an injury-plagued start to her season. And while it took some time for Richardson to find her feet both on and off the track, she finally showed her capabilities in a season that culminated in winning the world title in 10.65, a championship record and adding a bronze in the 200m and 4x100m relay gold. She has finally got it together and that means trouble for everyone else in the field.
Thompson-Herah decided not to retain Shanieke Osbourne who was working with her after the Jamaica National Championships in July and was ambitious in her next coaching partnership. Enter Reynaldo Walcott, head coach of Elite Performance Track Club who has the five-time world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (for the final time as she retires after the season) in his camp. It was Walcott who got Fraser-Pryce to a level that seemed unlikely since her move from MVP four years ago. And he oversaw quite possibly the best season of her career in 2022, clocking seven sub 10.70 second performances in the 100m. That included the 10.67 title-winning time in Oregon in 2022 which was, until last year, the championship record.
This would not be the latest that Thompson-Herah is starting an outdoor season. The answer to that question would be June 24th last year at the All Comers meet where she faced an uphill battle to get ready for the national championships which were at that point less than three weeks away; A battle she would lose.
This time, there is enough cushion between now and the end of June when the National Championships will take place. And Walcott has decided that now is the time to see what the ‘Big Machine’ (as she is known on social media) is made of. Richardson has had two 200m races under her belt so far and those openers will have done her well to prepare her for her 100m season debut. World 200m champion Shericka Jackson has already opened her 100m slate in 11.03 and Fraser-Pryce is the only member of the Jamaican big three that hasn't debuted yet. At 37 years of age and this being her farewell tour, naturally, she will have to be selective on the races she competes in before the national championships (if she even schedules any).
The consequences regarding her 2024 season have already been laid bare and don’t need repeating. If you want a refresher, check out my first story last December in the aftermath of her coaching split from Osbourne.
That women’s Olympic final is expected to be one of the most highly anticipated finals on the docket. Will it be near world record-breaking fast? Depending on the conditions and the athlete’s form, quite possibly. But in 24 hours we will know exactly where both Thompson-Herah and Richardson stand weeks before their respective national championships. Thompson-Herah has always risen to the big occasion once the Olympics are in view. We will see if this is more of the same, or if the women’s Olympic 100m title is in danger of leaving Jamaica, where it has resided for 16 years.
