Julien Alfred on how she prepared to become Olympic 100m champion
When AW catches up with Julien Alfred, she has been squeezing some London sightseeing into an itinerary packed with personal appearances. The 23-year-old is in town thanks to her new role as a tourism ambassador to Saint Lucia, helping to spread the word to the world about the small Caribbean nation of around 180,000 inhabitants from which she hails.
It’s a natural fit. Alfred is the country’s most high profile sporting export, after all, having become the first Saint Lucian ever to win a medal at a global athletics championships – taking 60m gold at the World Indoors in Glasgow back in March. If that were not enough cause for celebration, then a national holiday was declared when Olympic 100m gold and 200m silver medals then came her way this summer – performances that all helped her to come out on top in the voting for AW’s International Female Athlete of the Year.
“Julien Alfred Day” was celebrated on September 27 as the culmination of a four-day long commemoration of her achievements. Asked to name the most memorable moment she has experienced since dispatching the world’s greatest female sprinters in such emphatic style on the purple track in the pouring rain at the Stade de France and Alfred takes little time to respond.
“I think just the impact that I've had on a country,” she says. “[Seeing] a country coming together, united, and just celebrating the gold.” Tellingly, though, she adds: “But I have something to live up to now, as well.”
Dealing with the highest of expectations is a skill Alfred has had to acquire quickly in 2024. The year has not been one solid straight line of gold-tinted glory. She landed in Saint Lucia to a hero’s welcome after that world indoors win and was feted like a conquering hero. For someone whose early experiences of athletics had involved running barefoot and often training in her school uniform, it was a lot to take in. The medal made a big impact in more ways than one.
Alfred is based in Texas, where she trains under the guidance of coach Edrick Floreal and as part of the sprints group that also contains Britain’s former world 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith, as well as burgeoning Irish talent Rhasidat Adeleke. It was following a race in Austin during the early stages of the outdoor season where the 2022 Commonwealth 100m silver medallist realised all was not well.
“It was April when I just felt like I wasn't myself,” she says. “Every time I stepped out on the track I felt like there was this heavy weight on my shoulders that I just really could not handle.
“With it [world indoors gold] being Saint Lucia’s first medal, now they were expecting so much from me during that time. Instead of me focusing on doing it for myself first, being the one who's been putting in the hard work and making the sacrifices, I was thinking: ‘I don't want to disappoint my people. I don't want to disappoint Saint Lucia’. I think that's really how it came about, after winning the world indoors.”
Alfred admits to having had something approaching a breakdown but the first step she took in an effort to change things around was both simple and brave. “Talking to my coach and expressing exactly how I felt,” she says. “He understood and he worked with me patiently to get me ready for the Olympics. He took me off the track, we worked mentally and physically to get me back to where I am today.”
Indeed, between the beginning of May and the opening 100m heat of the Paris Olympics on August 2, Alfred raced just five times, but by the time the biggest competition of her life arrived she felt equipped for the task.
While the first series of the Netflix documentary SPRINT had trained its sights on the rivalry between the likes of 200m world champion Shericka Jackson and world 100m champion Sha’Carri Richardson, not so much attention had been paid to the Saint Lucian with the steely glare.
It wasn’t that world indoor title that made Alfred feel like she could be a true contender. It was the Olympic semi-final, when she overcame Richardson with relative ease, that brought with it the signals she had been looking for.
There was further outside noise to block out, though. Ahead of the final, the media began to swirl with stories as both the American and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce struggled with getting past security into the warm-up areas, the Jamaican two-time 100m Olympic champion ultimately joining her compatriot Jackson in having to withdraw through injury.
Once the line-up for the Parisian showdown had been confirmed, there was also a pre-race deluge to contend with that left the track glistening and covered with surface water. The conditions only served to heighten the feeling of drama and, as the camera panned along the line of 100m finalists, Richardson looked fearful. To her left and in the adjacent lane, Alfred looked fearsome.
In truth, the contest was settled from the earliest stages as Alfred flew from the blocks and opened a substantial gap that could not be closed as she hit the line in 10.72, to Richardson’s 10.87 and the 10.92 of Melissa Jefferson in third.
“When you know what you're there for, when you know your purpose, you just can’t allow yourself to get distracted,” says Alfred. “With all that was happening in Paris all I had to do was remember why I was there, focus on just executing my own race plan and not worry about anyone else.”
Alfred has watched the race back on numerous occasions and, despite it being such a command performance, she admits to not being entirely happy with it. The work has already begun with “Coach Flo” ahead of the 2025 World Championships (Alfred has unfinished business there after finishing fifth and fourth in the 100m and 200m respectively in Budapest last year).
“I don't think there's anything in particular that I would change [about the Olympic final],” says Alfred. “I mean, it happened how it was supposed to and I can’t change that now, but I think, going to the world championships next year, there are quite a few things that I have to work on with my coach. There’s always something to work on. Nobody’s perfect.”
» Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here
