Olympic champion Julien Alfred revealed having lesser races and working with her college coach on the integral things were part of the winning formular to her 2024 season exploits and famous victory over Sha’Carri Richardson in Olympic final.
The spotlight has been on Saint Lucia’s golden girl Julien Alfred since her iconic feat of defeating American star Sha’Carri Richardson in the Olympic 100m final in Paris.

Alfred blazed to the 100m gold medal in Paris in a blistering time of 10.72s to become Saint Lucia’s first Olympic champion in Paris. Not resting on her oars, she sped to the silver medal in the 200m final to end her Olympic debut on an iconic note.

Aside from this, the 24-year-old became the World Indoor 60m champion earlier in the year and capped off her monumental season with the Diamond League 100m title in Brussels to end the year as the undisputed sprint queen, having won all major championship titles available.

Following her exceptional season, Alfred received several honours in her home country and globally with the latest recognition being named the Best Female Athlete of Paris 2024 Olympics at the ANOC Awards.

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The talented speedster engraved her name in the history books when she blazed to the world 100m title in Budapest last year, clocking a blistering personal best time of 10.65s. By doing this, she defeated the ever-dominant Jamaican duo of Jackson and Fraser-Pryce, while Alfred was fifth in the race.

Her second-fastest career time came at the US Olympic Trials this year, where she comfortably clocked the world-leading time of 10.71s. This means Richardson’s top fastest legal career times are swifter than Alfred’s Olympic winning mark of 10.72s.

Despite her mixed season and two major losses, track legend Justin Gatlin and co-host Rodney Green on the Ready Set Go podcast believe Richardson still has potential for improvement.

“With a coach like Flo (Edrick Floreal, Alfred’s coach), Flo don’t like to lose but the same thing over there in the Claremont camp at Star Athletics, you got the silver medalist (Richardson) and the bronze medalist (Melissa Jefferson) who train together so now whatever things they left on the table in the 2024 season now they have the opportunity to get back out there and make things happen,” said Gatlin.

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“I still think we haven’t seen the full potential of Sha’Carri Richardson. I mean even being that Julien Alfred ran 10.72, we’ve seen Sha’Carri run times that are faster than that whether it be her slowing down or waving hands,” said Green.

So the question is have we seen the best of Sha’Carri Richardson?According to the documentary, those words were, “Julien Alfred, Olympic champion.” Causing goosebump? It should! After going through those videos, Julien Alfred gathered her motivation to write history in the Stade de France. And the track and field sports world knows about what came next. Julien Alfred earned a thumping victory against Sha’Carri Richardson, with the largest gap between topper and runner-up in the event’s history at the Olympics. But what was in those videos that motivated the 23-year-old to topple the barrier? Per her, it was a few videos of Usain Bolt’s Olympic races. Throughout her life, Alfred has idolized the Jamaican legend. So watching his Olympic gems in the critical time warmed her up. But apart from Bolt, Alfred had another figure in her mind to motivate her.