Sha’Carri Richardson, 23, and Noah Lyles, 26, are making history and our ancestors proud by becoming USA Track and Field Athletes of the Year, NBC Sports reported.
Richardson’s hard work — dominating 100-meter and 4 x 100-meter gold and 200-meter bronze at world championships — landed her to become a recipient of the USA Track and Field (USATF) Jackie Joyner-Kersee Award. She’s now the first woman who primarily runs the 100-meter to obtain the award since 2011, when Carmelita Jeter achieved it.
Lyles, who excelled at the 100-meter, 200-meter and 4×100-meter at August’s world championships, achieved the Jesse Owens Award for the third time. He won it in 2018 and 2022.
“Honored to be winning my 3rd Jesse Owens US Athlete of the Year award!” Lyles posted on X.
It has been quite a successful year for the two speedsters.
According to NewsOnyx, Lyles surpassed the fastest man in the world, Usain Bolt, with his record of most sub-20s (races completed under 20 seconds) on July 23 during the London Athletics Meet 2023 Diamond League event.
Bolt had 34, and Lyles obtained 35.
MadameNoire reported when the 23-year-old track beast assumed the “Fasted Woman In in World” title after winning the 100-meter race at the 2023 World Athletics Championship Track and Field Event in Budapest, Hungary, in August with her record-breaking 10.65 seconds.
In the same competition where she became the fastest woman in the world, Richardson made history as the first African American woman to obtain a medal in the 4 x 100-meter and 200-meter races.
When asked how much the world title meant to her, Sha’Carri expressed her gratitude to NBC Sports.
“It meant so much,” she said. “It meant the people that supported me, the people that believed in me, my family, just knowing that hard work pays off. It has been a lot that I’ve been going through, but to overcome all of that and my work speaking for itself (after haters attempted to silence and belittle her )…it feels amazing. It feels like everything has paid off. And I’m grateful.”
Sha’Carri has endured much public scrutiny, but nothing was as dramatic as when the Dallas track star was prohibited from competing in the Tokyo Games for testing positive for marijuana in 2021.
She was suspended for 30 days.
Things escalated when 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for the same thing but wasn’t suspended. Richardson publicly stated that she knew the difference between her and Valieva’s situation was skin color.
“It’s all in the skin,” she said.
