Sha‘carri Richardson and Gabby Thomas, two of America’s best-known sprinters, will face off Saturday in Oregon in the highly anticipated 200-meter final of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for track and field.
No one was close to Richardson in her semifinals heat Friday. She equaled her personal best at 21.92 seconds.
Then Thomas, who ran in a different heat than Richardson, upped the ante with a blazing 21.78, the world’s best for 2024.
“I was really happy with that,” Thomas told NBC Sports moments after the heat. “That felt like a really smooth and easy run for me. I didn’t really know what to expect. So, to see that kind of time for something that felt so nice and controlled was a good feeling.”
Richardson said she was looking forward to Saturday’s final and “busting it wide open.”
The gun for the women’s 200 meter final set was to be fired at about 8:27 p.m. Saturday ET.
Saturday’s action at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, will also include the men’s 200-meter final and and feature world No. 1 and 2 Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek, Lyles took bronze and Bednarek silver at that distance in Tokyo.
Lyles’ time of 19.60 in Friday’s seminal was a U.S. Olympic Trials record.
“It felt really easy,” said Lyles, who has already qualified for the 100-meter in Paris. “I was very shocked to see that time pop up. I wasn’t even really trying.”
The men’s 200 final will start around 9:49 p.m. ET.
Earlier this week, Richardson was victorious in the 100, punching her ticket to Paris as she seeks the crown of “fastest woman in the world.”
Richardson, a Dallas native and LSU alum, tested positive for THC after qualifying for the Tokyo Games and missed out on competing.
She admitted to taking the drug to cope with the death of her mother and her supporters lashed out at U.S. Doping Agency policies on cannabis in an era when the drug is being increasing legalized across America.
Qualifying for Paris in both the 100 and 200 “would show that divine timing is everything,” Richardson said after the semifinal heat.
“I will feel like it’s my responsibility to the USA to … go to Paris and bring back those medals,” she said.
Thomas, a Harvard alum, took bronze in the 200 in Tokyo. She and Richardson are ranked No. 2 and 6, respectively, in that event’s current world rankings.
Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson, who is competing in her national trials this weekend in Kingston, took the gold at the last Olympics.
Other finals set for Saturday in Eugene include the men’s and women’s 20K race walk, men’s discus, women’s long jump, women’s shot put and women’s 10,000.
The shot put competition includes Tokyo silver medalist Raven Saunders, who will be seeking her third trip to the Olympics.
