Despite battling heavy showers and low temperatures, Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred recorded the fifth-fastest women’s 100m run this season, winning that event in 10.93 seconds on Friday at the Texas Invitational, and backing up her world-leading run in the 200m a day prior.
Just shy of six weeks from her 25th birthday, the 2024 Olympic 100m gold medallist had her joint-second-fastest season opener in the 100m, and her fastest as early as April. In 2025, she opened her season in 10.89 seconds, but she ran her first 100m in June. The year before, she ran 10.93 to kick her season off in May. Her fastest April run before this weekend was 10.95 seconds in 2023.
With a trailing wind of 1.8 metres per second, Alfred, competing under the PUMA banner, dominated a field of collegiate runners on Friday at the Mike A. Myers Stadium in Austin, Texas. Fellow Saint Lucian, Naomi London, a University of Texas freshman, came fourth in 11.45 seconds. Jamaica’s Carleta Bernard, also a Longhorn student-athlete, ran 11.34 seconds to place second to Alfred.
Temperatures dipped as low as 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit), and athletes had to deal with persistent rain and stiff crosswinds.
In the absence of a major global championship this year for the first time since she turned professional in 2023, reports have indicated that Alfred is targeting the Commonwealth Games as her marquee event for 2026. She took 100m silver at Birmingham 2022, behind Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah. With Thompson-Herah on the comeback trail from injury, Alfred’s form could set up a juicy spectacle in Glasgow, Scotland, in July.
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