World Athletics Championships: Sha’Carri Richardson, from a positive cannabis test to 100m world champion

2023-08-21 23:13:08

At the start of the final, who had bet a dollar on the victory of American Sha’Carri Richardson in the 100m final of the World Championships in Budapest? Surely not many people even if she had won eight of the nine 100m she had run (including heats). The Texan also had four of the seven fastest times of the season. Only, the native of Dallas (Texas) born with this century 23 years ago has come back from so far.

Already during these Worlds, she went through a mouse hole to reach the final. She qualified on time. A few hours later this did not prevent him from triumphing in 10′’65 (wind: -0.2 m/s) thanks to a cannon stop, lane 9, ahead of Jackson (10′’72) and above all the five-time world champion Fraser-Pryce (10′’77). The new world champion becomes, with this time, the fifth best performer of all time (tied with Marion Jones, in 1998, and Shericka Jackson, this year).

The American was playing her first major championships, after being suspended for a positive cannabis test just before the 2021 Olympics. On July 1, 2021, several American media revealed that Richardson tested positive for cannabis during the Olympic selections, a few weeks before Tokyo. The sprinter admits it on social networks. “I am human,” she confesses.

She is suspended for a month by USADA, the American anti-doping agency, which prevents her from being at the start of the Olympic 100m in Japan. On the NBC channel, she defends herself. “I had no right to do so. I’m not looking for an excuse. I’m not looking for empathy. But when talking about Sha’Carri Richardson, there will never be the term steroid attached to that name. The product we are talking about here is cannabis. »

The US federation asks her in the process to follow a therapy, which she accepts. She admits to having used cannabis after learning of the death of her biological mother, who had abandoned her during her childhood. A year later, Sha’Carri Richardson had also missed his qualification for the 2022 Worlds in Eugene in the United States. After all that, here she is at the top of the sprint. We will obviously have to count on her at the Stade de France in a year for the Paris Games.