Updated ,first published
Sha’Carri Richardson thought racing the Stawell Gift would be glorified practice. She was right, it was glorious. She won in the greatest sprinting performance seen in Stawell.
Richardson won the Stawell Gift on Monday despite giving the field up to 10 metres’ head start. She ran 13.15 seconds, the fastest time any woman has ever run the distance at Stawell, and she did it from scratch.
It was not the biggest victory of the American’s career, but it was one of the hardest, with Richardson only reining in 19-year-old Charlotte Nielsen, who ran from nine metres, a metre before the line. Nielsen’s time of 13.19 seconds was the second fastest ever run by a woman at the Gift and so would have seen her comfortably win any other Gift.
Richardson, an Olympic and world champion, became just the third woman to win the $40,000 women’s gift from scratch.
Richardson said she knew she had the race won at the 90m mark; 30m before the finish line. She danced in celebration after her win and jumped into the arms of her boyfriend, world champion Christian Coleman.
“The race was phenomenal, focusing in on the race execution me and my coach Denis have been working on and using this as a race to utilise those new gears and show them off. So it was a really good executed race,” she said.
“At the 90[m], I just knew that once I executed the front half of my race the way it felt and once I am where my coach wants me, the rest of the race takes care of it own.
“I was very confident going into the semis and coming out of the semis knowing to double down on what it is I did in the semis and just correct the small things that needed to be corrected for finals.
“I feel like just executing the race from the start line to the finish line, the result will take care of itself.
“Every time I step on the track and I am able to compete healthy and use it as a way to just get my race better and better and better, I don’t see less than a regular race. The worlds, Olympics, every time you get a chance to touch the track, you use that chance.
“The experience in general has been different, it has been unique, I feel like it was a one-on-one experience. It can’t be duplicated anywhere else or any other event I have been to, so it is something I have enjoyed and appreciated, and it has set up my season, knowing I am right on track.
“I said in the press conference that it was glorified practice … this one so being early in my season, I saw it as something I can use to execute, and it just so happened that when executing, I was able to win as well.”
Earlier, the Olympic gold medallist needed every centimetre of the 120m track to win her semi-final in 13.52s by just a millimetre.
Her partner Coleman was – like Gout Gout last year – unable to make the final, run out in the semi-finals after failing to make up ground on Grady Woods, who won the semi-final in 12.32s after starting off seven metres.
He still played his part in the final. It was Coleman who inspired the winner – Olufemi Komolafe, a medical student from Adelaide – to take running seriously. Komolafe won the men’s final in 12.03s off five metres.
“He [Coleman] was really the trigger for me to really start taking it seriously,” he said.
“I had to take some risks. I would’ve liked to have taken it slower after a hamstring injury and make sure that I don’t re-injure it, but I only had a few weeks left, so I had to take some risks and train every day and be relentless about it.
“Luckily, I was able to come through without being worse for wear, and I was ready.”
Coleman was sanguine about missing the final.
“I felt good, felt like I put up a good fight, but these guys are no slouches, so I mean giving up that much of a margin over 120m, it is what it is,” Coleman said.
“I was thinking about everything we had been working on, don’t break, just stay tall, and I feel like I was inching closer and closer and closer. Maybe if it was 130m or 150m I might have had them.
“I had fun, that’s all I was asking for. I think I will get better and better throughout the year.
“I didn’t really know what to expect, I was just embracing it and just coming out here to compete. I’m a competitor, so I just really wanted to give myself a shot by just making the final.
“It’s tough, running on grass, giving that much of a margin to people who have trained specifically for this.
“I wasn’t thinking about them [the other runners] much at all, just thinking about my lane and how I am going to execute the same way I do any race if they are right beside you.
“This is the first time I have had a race where they are all in front of me, I just tried to stay focused on my lane and what I needed to execute. I feel like I put together a good race, a good run, would have been good to get in the final.”
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Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.
