EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Sha'Carri Richardson won the 100 meters in 10.82 seconds Friday night to capture the U.S. championships title two years after having her national title stripped because of a doping violation.
The 23-year-old Richardson overcame a slow start in the final to qualify for next month's world championships, which will mark her first major international meet. Earning the second and third spots in the event were Brittany Brown (10.90) and Tamari Davis (10.99).
Moments after she was introduced at the starting line, Richardson flung off her trademark orange wig to show off her braids and a star shaved into the right side of her hairdo.
Afterward, she stopped briefly for a TV interview and conceded that two years ago, she was not ready for the moment.
“I'm here to say, ‘I’m not back, I'm better,'” Richardson declared.
Moments after Richardson’s win, Cravont Charleston pulled an upset in the men's sprint, finishing in 9.95 to edge Christian Coleman by .01. It was Charleston's first final in a major meet and he made the best of it.
“Just keep running,” Charleston said. “That's what I tried to do.”
Noah Lyles finished third, only four days after testing positive for COVID. He'll go for a double at worlds, his spot in his signature event, the 200, assured because he is the defending world champion.
He is one of 10 American athletes, including Fred Kerley (100), Athing Mu (800) and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (400 hurdles) who are defending world champions and have automatic bids into the meet in Budapest, Hungary, next month. On Friday, McLaughlin-Levrone ran 49.60 in the 400 flat to win the semifinal in that event by 1.4 seconds.
But this week has mostly been about Richardson, who has not looked in this good of form since the 2021 Olympic Trials, when she routed the field, only to have the result vacated when her drug test showed she had used marijuana. She admitted she had used it to relieve stress after learning her mother had died. That episode triggered a debate about whether marijuana should really be on the banned list.
Officials elected to leave it on the list because experts determined it was “against the spirit of sport.”
Richardson ran the best time of the year, 10.71, the day before in opening heats, but she'll leave Eugene with only the second-fastest 100 time of the week. A few hours before Richardson's final, Shericka Jackson won Jamaica's championships with a time of 10.65 seconds, setting up Jackson and Richardson as the fastest contenders at worlds.
Other winners Friday included Anna Hall in the heptathlon, Harrison Williams in the decathlon, Vashti Cunningham in the women's high jump and Donald Scott in the men's triple jump.
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