TOKYO >> Bob Marley and the Wailers bounced through an all but empty Olympic Stadium late Saturday night, a familiar song serenading a familiar sight.
We’re jammin’
To think that jammin’ was a thing of the past
We’re jammin’
And I hope this jam is gonna last
As the song played, Elaine Thompson-Herah lingered just past the finish line wrapped in a Jamaican flag, the same flag that has been draped all over the Olympic Games’ women’s 100 meters now for parts of three decades.
Only minutes before Thompson-Herah won the 100 gold medal in an Olympic record 10.61 seconds into a headwind, the second fastest women’s time in history, successfully defending the title she won four years earlier in Rio de Janeiro, leading a Jamaican sweep of the medals and extending the Caribbean island’s gold medal streak in the event to a fourth consecutive Games.
“Today I’ve got no more words,” she said. “I’ve never run this fast. It hasn’t fully soaked in. Probably in a month I can see what it feels like.”
Only Florence Griffith Joyner’s dubious world record of 10.49 is faster and in the coming days and weeks Thompson-Herah, 29, will almost certainly ask herself how close she could have gotten to that mark had she not thrown an arm out in celebration well before the finish line.
“I think I celebrated much too early,” she admitted.
Thompson-Herah, however, could hardly be blamed.
After sweeping the 100 and 200 titles in Rio, Thompson-Herah spent much of the next five years battling Achilles’ injuries. She was fifth in the 2017 World Championships 100 in London, fourth at the 2019 Worlds in Doha. The injuries were so severe that she often raced in distance spikes because of the added padding.
“It’s amazing because two months ago, probably a month and a half ago, I didn’t think I would be here today,” she said.
Thompson-Herah showed up at the Jamaican Olympic Trials uncertain if she would even make the team.
“You kind of saw the result at the Trials, as I came third in both events,” she said referring to the 100 and 200. “I wasn’t healthy. I went there to just qualify.”
Indeed the sport’s focus in the months leading up to Tokyo was on a showdown between Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, 34, the 2008 and 2012 Olympic 100 gold medalist and reigning World champion, Sha’Carri Richardson, the flamboyant young American, and Great Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith, runner-up in in the 100 and winner at 200 at the 2019 Worlds.
Richardson threw down first, unloading a 10.72 clocking in Florida in April. Fraser-Pryce responded in June with a 10.63, then making her the second fastest woman in history. Asher-Smith spent much of the spring dealing with a hamstring injury that at one point in April she thought would require surgery. A doctor in Germany told her surgery wasn’t necessary but the injury continued to hamper training.
Richardson didn’t make it to Tokyo, banned after testing positive for marijuana following her Olympic Trials victory in Eugene in June. Asher-Smith was also absent from Saturday’s final, finishing a non-qualifying third in her semifinal, the months of limited training catching up to her.
Asher-Smith wasn’t the only high profile casualty in the 100 rounds Saturday night. Trayvon Bromell, the 2021 world leader and Olympic Trials winner, was fourth in his first round heat in 10.05, well off his season’s best of 9.77, and did not advance to the next round.
“Honestly, I have no words for it,” Bromell said. “It don’t look like I actually pushed myself and that is going to be the thing my coach is mad about.”
Two hours later the women’s 100 final field settled into the starting blocks.
“I was super nervous,” Thompson-Herah recalled.
Fraser-Pryce was out first and held the lead through the first 60 meters. But just before the 70 meter mark Thompson-Herah shifted gears and began to pull away. Fraser-Pryce ran 10.74 for second, with Shericka Jackson completing the Jamaican medal sweep at 10.76, well ahead of Marie-Jossee Ta Lou of Ivory Coast in fourth (10.91).
“It’s a special feeling because I remember in 2008,” Thompson-Herah said, referring to another Jamaican sweep in the Olympic 100, “that I was home, not even an athlete like myself here representing (Jamaica), and I was super excited for them to be in that history mark, it’s amazing. And we are amazing.”
How amazing?
Jamaica has won 10 of 12 women’s 100 medals and all four gold medals since the 2008 Games and 16 of 30 medals in the event since 1984.
“It’s definitely a legacy for Jamaica,” Fraser-Pryce said. “It speaks to the depth that we have.”
Thompson-Herah and Fraser-Pryce will now attempt to add to the medal haul in the 200 and the 4×100 relay where Jamaica is not only favored to win, but also to break the world record of 40.82 set by Team USA in winning in 2012 in London.
“Everybody’s been talking about the world record and ‘Jamaica is going to win,’” Jackson, 27, said. “First, we need to get the baton around safely.”
After Tokyo, a showdown with Richardson and a nice payday await Thompson-Herah and Fraser-Pryce at next month’s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene.
Saturday night there was also talk of Thompson-Ferah taking aim at Griffith Joyner’s world record or whether she hadn’t already equaled the fastest legal 100 in history?
Griffith Joyner’s 10.49 world record in the 1988 Olympic Trials quarterfinals in Indianapolis has been considered suspect from the moment she crossed the finish line. The wind gauge read 0.0 for the race even though wind readings for horizontal jumps at the same time were well over the allowable limit for record purposes of 2.0 meters-per-second.
The IAAF, the sport’s global governing body, since renamed World Athletics, and other organizations commissioned studies of the race and determined that Griffith Joyner was aided by a tailwind between 5 mps to 7 mps. But the IAAF did not erase the world record. The Association of Track and Field Statisticians beginning in 1997 has listed the mark as “probably strongly wind assisted, but recognized as a world record.”
The fastest non-winded aided time in history was Griffith Joyner’s 10.61 clocking in the 1988 Trials final the following day. A mark Thompson-Herah matched Saturday even with her premature celebration.
“I believe in myself,” she said “but I didn’t expect to run this fast.”
Thompson-Herah was asked if she now believed she could take down the 10.49 question marks and all?
“I’m still working on it,” she said. “It’s a work in progress. Anything is possible.”