‘Goodbye fans, I’m leaving but promise to return’: Sha’Carri Richardson, an American track and field athlete Announce.
I’m a Bentley,” Sha’Carri Richardson says proudly at one point in Sprint, the fly-on-the-wall Netflix series that follows some of the world’s leading track stars. “Fast, expensive … fancy.” It shows how little she knows about cars.
Bentleys are all about subtlety. The amenities don’t intrude. The speed is hushed. They’re grand but never ostentatious. Richardson? She’s a Lamborghini: not just fast but abruptly so while, at the same time, loud and susceptible to spiralling out of control at any moment. But this latest edition of the Richardson is vastly more fine-tuned for her Olympic debut – on Friday, a do-over of sorts as she won her 100m heat comfortably.
One of the most recognisable athletes on Earth, the 24-year-old Richardson has somehow managed to keep a lower profile than ever. Of course, she’s still rocking the bold body ink and the acrylic nails, a conspicuous callback to legendary US sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, but the brightly coloured wigs that were long her trademark have been replaced by more natural styles. All the while, she has remained inescapably prominent in NBC’s TV promotional blitz in the US, and in adverts for Olay and Oikos.
For those who may have forgotten Richardson’s story so far, just three years ago she logged perhaps the fastest rise and fall from grace in US sports history. Shortly after winning the 100m at the 2021 US Olympic trials, she tested positive for THC, the primary ingredient in cannabis – which, while legal in Oregon, has been on the Olympics’ forbidden list since 1999.
Richardson said that she had taken the drug to manage the stress of having to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics while mourning the death of her biological mother – news, she says, that was broken to her in a pre-race interview. Family is a delicate matter for Richardson. Reportedly, she has never claimed relationships with either her mother or her father. In Sprint, the Netflix series, Richardson’s aunt Shayaria is credited as “Sha’Carri’s mom”. After her golden heat in the 2021 US trials, Richardson made a beeline to her grandmother Betty Harp – whom, in Vogue, she credits with “making me the person I am.”
In an attempt at damage control after the 2021 US trials, Richardson made an appearance on NBC’s Today Show and showed just how poorly equipped her PR minders were for that job. They couldn’t even be bothered to change the battery in a chirping smoke alarm at Richardson’s house, let alone shoot her properly for the remote interview, leaving her looking as harsh as the rest of us do on Zoom calls.
They also let her stand for the whole interview, which led to her fidgeting with her posture and hair. That distracted viewers from noticing the pain in her voice at having to serve a month-long suspension as the Games approached.