Sha’Carri Richardson sees the 2024 Olympic games as her shot at redemption. After an amazing performance at the Olympic Trials in 2021, she and missed out on her chance to compete for team USA at the Tokyo games. Since then, she’s been out to prove that she’s up for the challenge this time around.
“I’m not back,” she says. “I’m better.” In an interview for Vogue’s August 2024 digital edition, the superstar sprinter opened up about her evolution as an athlete, her personal style and the meaning behind a viral moment she had on the track last year.
“I’m not gonna change the confidence that I have in myself ever. But at the same time, I have learned there is a way that I can carry that so much more gracefully. That’s where that moment came from,” Richardson’s confidence was on full display at the U.
S. Track and Field Championships in July 2023, when before the race started, she took off the signature orange wig she had raced in so many times before to reveal a beautiful set of ombré braids. “Oh wow, she means business,” you can hear in the background as the wig lay on the track.
Richardson won that race with a time of 10.82 seconds and became a national champion who will represent the United States at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Key Rentz, who did Richardson’s braids for the meet, told Vogue that she originally worried that Sha’Carri didn’t like her style when she showed up for the race in the wig.
But as soon as the wig came off,.
