In the city where she expects to ironclad her legacy at the Olympics next year, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is reliving the moment she went viral on the school run. You may have seen the clip of the greatest female sprinter in history, baseball cap back to front, thrashing a field of fellow mums on her son’s sports day in Jamaica recently. But, as Fraser-Pryce reveals for the first time, there was more to it than meets the eye. It boiled down to pride after a fall – as well as an audacious challenge from another parent.
“Two weeks beforehand she started sending me photos of her working out in the gym. And then she told me she was coming for me!” says Fraser-Pryce, her smile lighting up a gunmetal grey day in Paris. “I was like, ‘You can’t be serious girl!’”. But the friend, whose daughter is in her five-year-old son’s Zyon’s class, insisted she wouldn’t be backing down. “And when we got to sports day, she even started giving me the eyes, trying to psych me out.”
Yet while she had her track spikes in her car, Fraser-Pryce didn’t bite until her son fell in one event and came third in the obstacle race, and her husband could only finish fourth in the dad’s sprint. At that point she decided enough was enough, and she had to uphold the family honour.
“Imagine leaving with a bronze medal and a fourth place,” she says, laughing with delight. “It wouldn’t have looked good. So I just had to show up. I had to preserve my name.” She took things seriously enough to warm up. And then, to the accompaniment of cheering kids, delivered another exhibition of speed to win by half the length of the grass track, with her friend back in second.
We have become used to such breathless displays ever since the Jamaican burst on to the scene by winning the Olympic 100m title in 2008, a day after Usain Bolt catapulted into the sporting stratosphere. It might have taken Fraser-Pryce a bit longer to reach the same impossible heights, but she is certainly there now having won 22 Olympic and world medals, including another 100m gold at last year’s world championships, across her 15-year career.
Yet at an age, and stage, when most athletes are winding down, Fraser-Pryce remains carnivorous for more success. That was clear when the Guardian spoke to her just before she collected the prestigious Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year award in Paris, beating a field that included the swimmer Katie Ledecky, tennis star Iga Swiatek, and 400m hurdles world record-holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. “I believe the best is yet to come,” she says. “It’s so strange to say that at 36, but what drives me is that every part of my being believes I can run faster. I genuinely believe that in my soul.”
But there is more to it than wanting more glory at this year’s world championships in Budapest and the Paris Olympics. Fraser-Pryce also wants to be sure there is no ounce of potential left when she finally calls it a day at the end of 2024. “I still think that I am at the door of something amazing, and if I still feel good and training is going really well, why should I stop?” she asks. “A lot of people say, finish on a high. That’s good. But I only want to finish when I cross the line knowing I have given it everything. Then it will be time to quit.”
It is hard to argue with someone who only won more world sprint titles than anyone else, but in 2022 also ran the 100m in under 10.7 seconds seven times – three more than any woman in history in a calendar year.
In her bid to fight off Father Time, Fraser-Pryce has undoubtedly been helped by the new wave of super spikes. However she prefers to focus more on her switch to a new coach, Reynaldo Walcott, in 2021 and a willingness to continue to hone and refine her technique, leading to better acceleration mechanics. “Every year that I go to practice, I am almost like a sponge,” she explains. “I am always willing to learn and try something else. You can’t stay the same. You have to evolve.”
That evolution has taken place off the track too. After Zyon’s birth in 2017 by caesarean section, Fraser-Pryce feared she would never get her core strength back, let alone return to her best. Instead she has got stronger, physically and mentally. With it has also come a freeness and willingness to speak her mind.
“The message I definitely want to get across to female athletes is there is nothing wrong with being strong,” she says. “There is nothing wrong with being competitive, fierce, and wanting to win. And there is certainly nothing wrong about saying it as well. That is something that has changed. In the past I had a fear attached to speaking out about the things I wanted to accomplish.
“Because as women we are told, ‘Oh just be cute, and just run and look nice and whatever’. But now I am comfortable in my skin, with who I am, and the gift God has given me. And I am making sure that I express that in a genuine and authentic way.”
Fraser-Pryce is not someone who talks trash about her rivals, and is widely liked across the circuit. Yet on the track she is killer. “In the nicest way,” she says, laughing. “I am like a gentle assassin. I don’t need to say a lot of things to compete because the drive I have is deep inside. That fire I have to excel comes from years of being at a place where I never thought I belonged.”
Fraser-Pryce’s warmth comes across again as she expresses her shock at the death of American athlete Tori Bowie last week, as well the admiration she had for the former 100m world champion. “Tori was one of those athletes that always had a good energy,” she says. “She was always vibrant. I remember seeing her in 2019 and she was like, ‘Where’s the Jamaican food, what’s going on?’ She was just always so engaging, and her smile lit up the room.”
When Fraser-Pryce heard the news of the 32-year-old’s passing at training last week she couldn’t believe it. “My teammates were talking about it, and I said are you sure? They had seen it on the internet but they weren’t sure if it was fake news. I only hope that her family is finding solace in her memories, her accomplishments and what she was able to do.”
For now, though, Fraser-Pryce’s focus is on her first proper race of the season in Kenya, where she will take on the talented American Sha’Carri Richardson, who hasn’t been shy at proclaiming her own talents. It is a challenge Fraser-Pryce is clearly looking forward to. “I’m blessed to have been running for a long time, and to have faced athletes who bring out the very best in you,” she says. “That is the beauty of track and field. It is making sure that at every given moment you are ready.”
That, everyone surely knows by now, is a sentiment that Fraser-Pryce upholds wherever she is racing. Whether it is in front of 90,000 people in an Olympic Stadium – or her son’s school in Jamaica.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was speaking ahead of the Laureus World Sports Awards. Find out more at www.laureus.com
