EUGENE, Ore. — Editor's note: The video published above is a WFAA report when Richardson was honored with a track in Dallas ISD named after her.
Sha’Carri Richardson, alumna of Dallas Carter High School and former LSU track star, showed off incredible blazing speed at the U.S. Olympic track trials in Eugene, Ore. on Friday despite some adversity at the start.
When the gun sounded, the 2023 world championship gold medal winner shot out of the blocks, well actually stumbled, and still won her pre-liminary heat with ease. Oh yeah, and her right shoelace was untied the entire time.
She finished in 10.88 seconds — fastest of any of the 34 sprinters spread over four races, and a mere .02 seconds off the time she ran three years ago, when she won the trials, only to have the victory erased by a positive test for marijuana.
“That tells me I’m prepared,” she said in a post-race interview with NBC. “I just need to put it all together.”
Richardson will be back on the track Saturday for the semifinals. If she finishes in the top two in that race, she’ll go for the title less than two hours later. The top three finishers in the final will head to Paris.
Her quest to make her run at Paris comes amid an appearance in Netflix's docuseries ahead of the Olympics, a new brand deal with Nike, and a local track in Dallas being named after her.
For Richardson, things went sideways shortly after her victory at trials in 2021, when her marijuana positive was revealed, after which she disclosed she had been battling with depression in the wake of her mother’s recent death and other issues.
Ever since, she has been on a long comeback that she looks at in a different way — “I’m not back, I’m better.” And, by almost every count — especially the ones the public can chart on the track — she is.
“The fact that the world can see so much work I've done on myself, for myself, and the world receives that, I'm appreciative and I will always show up for my fans,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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