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Julien Alfred has shared why she is still in awe at how she was received by her country following her heroic Olympics performance.
Paris Olympics 100m champion Julien Alfred has said the hero's welcome she received after her glory in the French capital is a feeling she will live to value in her career.
Her history-grabbing first-ever gold medal for St Lucia, which has a population of just 180,000 people, was unthinkable considering the little-known sprinting history the Caribbean country has.
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08:27 - 23.11.2024
'Not my only rival on track' - Julien Alfred dismisses fabricated rivalry with Sha'Carri Richardson
Saint Lucia's finest said she can't afford to lose sleep against a single competitor
Traditionally, the USA, whose population is estimated to be around 335 million people and Jamaica, the nation where each of the Olympic 100m gold medalists from Beijing 2008 to Tokyo 2020 were born with over 2.8 million, have produced the largest number of women’s Olympic 100m champions.
Making her success even rosier is the fact that she did not just beat the best of America and Jamaica. Her win in the French capital earned her the title of the fastest woman on a planet.
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06:20 - 15.11.2024
'That's not on my bingo' - Julien Alfred refuses to discuss possibility of breaking Flo-Jo's 35-year-long 100m record
The likes of Sha’Carri Richardson and Shericka Jackson will be itching to beat Alfred in the upcoming world championship season.
"It was very overwhelming," she said of her hero's welcome. "Definitely not what I expected, in the way that the love they poured into me. But overall it was really exciting,” she told Olympics.com.
The 23-year-old has, however, maintained that breaking Florence Griffith-Joyner’s decades-old 100m world record of 10.49 seconds is not part of her bingo.
The 200m Olympic silver medalist will rekindle her rivalry with Sha'Carri Richardson at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo. The post-Paris celebration won't be the last memorial celebrating the greatest sporting achievement in the history of Saint Lucia.
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