St Lucia’s Julien Alfred powers to victory in girls’s 100 metres

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Julien Alfred of St Lucia received the ladies’s 100 metres on the Paris Olympics in a nationwide document of 10.72 seconds, upsetting world champion and quickest girl on the earth this 12 months Sha’Carri Richardson of the US who needed to accept silver.

Alfred, 23, turned the primary athlete from the tiny Caribbean nation of 168,000 inhabitants to win an Olympic medal. Richardson suffered a poor begin in pouring summer season rain, however rebounded within the closing metres to assert second place in 10.87 seconds. Her compatriot and coaching companion Melissa Jefferson received bronze, narrowly edging Daryll Neita of Nice Britain.

The outcomes adopted a night of confusion on the Stade de France throughout which a pre-race favorite, the three-time gold medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica abruptly dropped out earlier than the semi-final. Movies circulating on social media purported to indicate Fraser-Pryce and Richardson initially being denied entry to the warm-up space a couple of hours earlier than the beginning of the occasion.

A spokesman for World Athletics deferred questions on warm-up space entry to native organisers. Spokespeople for Paris 2024 and the Jamaican athletics federation didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. 

Alfred’s gold medal marked the primary time since 2004 {that a} non-Jamaican has received the ladies’s 100 metres on the Olympic Video games, and the primary time since 1988 that Jamaica has been utterly shut out of the medals within the occasion.

Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson, defending Olympic bronze medallist within the 100 metres, withdrew from the occasion in Paris with a purpose to concentrate on the 200 metre race, her speciality.

Richardson, whose private better of 10.65 locations her fifth on the all-time record, made her first Olympic look after profitable the 2021 US Olympic trials for choice to the Tokyo Video games, solely to have her outcomes nullified days later upon a optimistic check for marijuana, a prohibited substance.

Alfred’s victory got here on a night of firsts — Dominica’s Thea Lafond, 30, received gold a couple of minutes later within the triple soar. She broke the nationwide document along with her 15.02 metre soar, and within the course of secured her nation’s first ever Olympic medal.