Some moments in an athlete’s career unfold quietly, without a starting gun. In Oslo, during what had already been a triumphant week for Julien Alfred, one such moment arrived. Not on the track, but in a conversation. Just days after turning 24, fresh off victories in both Oslo and Stockholm, Alfred encountered her childhood idol, Usain Bolt. It wasn’t the meeting alone that left a mark. It was the question she chose to ask him, and the answer that followed.
“I mean, it’s been a dream come true,” Alfred said when asked how it felt to finally meet Bolt in an interview with CBC News. “It was just an honor to meet him. I went to Jamaica for, like, three years and never got a chance to, like, meet him in person. And I mean, to finally meet him at this stage of my life, it was such an honor,” Alfred further added. There was no hyperbole in her voice, only a sense of fulfillment. She had waited years. Literally lived and trained on the same island as the man who revolutionized sprinting, and only now did their paths finally cross.
But Alfred didn’t simply shake his hand and pose for a photo. She had a purpose. “I mean, I had so many questions to ask him,” she admitted. “And one of the main questions I asked was, you know, what’s it like to achieve so many things, and what did he do to achieve so many things?” In that moment, it was clear that Alfred was not searching for a soundbite. She was after something specific: an understanding of what sustained long-term excellence.
The answer Bolt gave her wasn’t about records or routines. It was about discipline. “One thing that he said to me,” Alfred recalled, “was that focusing on what you did to get there, which is training, and not being distracted by having.” She further added, “You know—sometimes women have so many different opportunities presented to us at the time. And it’s just really picking and choosing which one is important and which one is not, and really not forgetting what really got us there, which is training.” Surely, it wasn’t a technical exchange.
It was a meeting of two minds, rooted in shared values. The mutual respect was unspoken, but obvious. Alfred didn’t gush; she listened. She didn’t describe the encounter as overwhelming; she called it an “honor.” And chasing greatness, Alfred is buckling up to face a stiff competition against Sha’Carri Richardson and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden at the Prefontaine Classic.
Julien Alfred, Melissa Jefferson, and Sha’Carri Richardson to finally collide at Prefontaine
For nearly a year, the women’s 100-meter podium from Paris has existed in fragments. Each sprinter tracing her own path, her own schedule, her own statements. That ends this Saturday in Eugene. Julien Alfred, the Olympic champion who has looked nearly untouchable in Europe this summer, will finally share the starting line with both Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Sha’Carri Richardson. And none of them will have room to coast.
Jefferson-Wooden has been precise and forceful on the U.S. Grand Slam circuit, racing with the sort of efficiency that rarely draws attention but never fails to win races. Alfred, meanwhile, has kept her focus sharp. Her execution across Oslo and Stockholm left no doubt that she has maintained the same internal rhythm that won her Olympic gold. Then there is Richardson, the least predictable yet perhaps the most studied of the three. She has appeared only once in competition this year, clocking a time that raised more questions than answers. But anyone who has followed her career knows that one meeting, one moment, is often enough for her to rearrange the narrative.
The race will not merely be a test of form. It will be an examination of who controls the present. “I had so many questions to ask him,” Alfred said recently of meeting Usain Bolt. The one she asked, how he stayed grounded while achieving so much, echoes loudly now. If her training has stayed disciplined, as Bolt advised, then Saturday may serve as both proof and preview. But with Richardson back on the line and Jefferson-Wooden in full stride, execution, not memory, will decide the outcome.
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