12: Greatest Athletes Spotlight: Elaine Thompson-Herah
Written By: Ben Drury
Hello everyone and good morning, it’s Wednesday which means it's time for another edition of the Greatest Athletes Spotlight. Last week was spring break and I felt that there was no better way to come back from this break than with a spotlight of another great Jamaican sprinter, Elaine Thompson-Herah. Like two other Jamaican greats, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce or the GOAT himself, Usain Bolt, Thompson-Herah is one of the most successful sprinters of all time in her own right.
In 2015, Thompson-Herah burst onto the professional sprint scene when she was a part of the Jamaican 4x100m relay team that won the world championship title in Beijing. At that same world championship, Thompson-Herah also had a great individual performance, placing second in the 200m, at just 22. While this looked like a promising start for Thompson-Herah’s career, her 4x100m relay win remains her only world championship title. But, even though she hasn’t touched gold anymore, she has been on the podium three other times.
You may be wondering, where’s the twist? How does one world championship title in a relay make an athlete one of the greatest of all time? Well, while Thompson-Herah hasn’t had the most success in world championships, she has large amounts of success on a bigger stage in the Olympics. During her ten-year career, she has won five Olympic gold medals in just two appearances. Winning five gold medals is a big accomplishment, but Thompson-Herah took it a step further. In the two games she has competed in, she has won the sprint double of the 100m and the 200m, which if you know anything about track and field is an incredible feat. Along with having a large collection of global medals, Thompson-Herah is also one of the fastest women of all time. Her PR of 10.54 in the 100m stands today as the second fastest time of all time behind another great, Florence Griffith-Joyner, who has also been featured in the spotlight. Not only has she run the second-fastest time ever, but Thompson-Herah also ran two other times in the all-time top ten. While the 100m is Thompson-Herah’s best event, she has also run some of the fastest times in the 200m as well. In the top lists for the 200m, Thompson-Herah holds three times in the top fifteen.
Since her double win in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics, Thompson-Herah left MVP Track Club, an iconic track team in Jamaica, with some notable members being Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and another Jamaican great, Shericka Jackson. After leaving the team, Elaine Thompson-Herah was able to qualify for the Paris Olympics but withdrew because of an Achilles injury, and right now she is trying to come back during this upcoming season.
From winning five Olympic gold medals, being a consistent podium finisher at multiple world championships, and running some of the fastest times of all time, Elaine Thompson-Herah has cemented herself as one of the greats.
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