Over the last four years, women’s sprinting saw Sha’Carri Richardson become a world champion, Julien Alfred deliver Olympic gold for Saint Lucia, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden’s historic 2025 season and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce complete a greatest-of-all-time career.
A name notably absent from that list is Elaine Thompson-Herah.
She won back-to-back Olympic 100m and 200m gold medals in 2016 and 2021 but has been dogged by injuries since, including missing the 2024 Olympics and the entire 2025 season after an Achilles tear.
Thompson-Herah returns to the championship stage on Saturday and Sunday as a headliner for the Jamaican team at the World Relays in Botswana (live on Peacock).
It would be her first time competing in a global final since the 2022 World Championships.
“It’s been a rough one, mentally, but I’ve overcome that,” she said Friday. “Track and field is my passion. It’s my love. Because I love it so much, I think that recovery part of it is easy. Not having pain is also a good feeling, of course.”
Thompson-Herah returned to competition in February, March and April at domestic meets and reported no pain afterward.
Those were her first races since tearing an Achilles at the June 2024 USATF Grand Prix in New York City. That was a sad end to what started as a promising Paris Olympic cycle.
After sweeping 100m, 200m and 4x100m golds at the Tokyo Olympics, she ran 10.54 for the 100m at the August 2021 Prefontaine Classic, the second-fastest time in history behind Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world record of 10.49 from 1988.
“After running 10.54, it has been a challenge,” Thompson-Herah said. “Running that high, it takes a toll on my body, I must say. The Achilles was not giving me anything. Pretty much not competing last year, I think it has done a lot to me. I probably needed that rest away from the sport to clear myself and to come back. So using this season for me is like a rebuilding process.”
Thompson-Herah, 33, isn’t looking too far ahead. She didn’t even know the next World Championships in 2027 are in Beijing, site of her global championship debut in 2015 (200m silver).
“I don’t think I’m where I want to be yet,” she said. “I’m being patient with myself. ... Once the pain is gone, Elaine is capable of doing anything.”
