Before leaving primary school, Julien Alfred had one goal in mind: to be “the feminine Usain Bolt”. Sitting in a Kensington hotel, adorned with a gold Olympic necklace and ring and, best of all, after winning the 100 meter gold medal in Paris this summer, that dream came true.
Alfred was an outsider and a relative unknown when she stood on the starting blocks on the purple track in pouring rain at the Stade de France on August 3. Sha’Carri Richardson had won gold at the World Championships the year before and was the favorite. , while no one from Saint Lucia had ever won an Olympic medal, regardless of color. Just 10.72 seconds later, the Caribbean island had a new hero and Alfred’s life completely changed.
“Crazy” is the word the 23-year-old uses to describe the time since Paris. She speaks to Telegraph sport after arriving in London on a flight from a post-Olympic awards ceremony in Portugal and added: “[It’s been a] a whirlwind, for sure, but I have felt a lot of love and support from a lot of people over the last few months, from St. Lucia, around the world, the Caribbean… overall, it was a great feeling.
Saint Lucia has a population of less than 200,000 and first competed in the Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta. Despite fielding athletes in disciplines such as athletics, swimming and sailing, the nation had not seen anyone stand on the podium before Alfred.
It’s no wonder the small Caribbean nation went all out to celebrate Alfred’s achievements (they also took silver in the 200m). This includes a National Julien Alfred Day on September 27, when a capacity crowd attended a free concert at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground, a stadium named after another famous St. Lucian sportsman.
A section of the Millennium Highway was renamed the Julien Alfred Highway; she received a million-dollar reward from the government, as well as a 10,720-foot plot of land, in commemoration of her victory. Alfred’s face will also feature in a series of exercise books and a stamp will be created in commemoration.
When asked if his current life is different from that before Paris, the answer is simple: “Certainly. I am recognized more in person and everywhere I travel. Even my family members. Now people know they are my brothers and sisters, they are also recognized and they are approached in town, at work, so it has changed their lives too.
“It got really competitive in elementary school.”
Alfred’s sporting journey began in primary school. She remembers running for her colored house at Ciceron RC Combined School in Castries, the capital of St Lucia: “Running against young girls, and even boys sometimes, when it was really competitive at my primary school – I think that was my first memory. of the sprint.
His life could have taken a very different direction without a few key interventions. Alfred’s talent was recognized not by an athletic coach but by school librarian Brenda Virgil. She introduced Alfred to trainer Cuthbert Modeste (also known as Twa Ti Ne) and, from the age of nine, training became more regimented over the next three years.
However, after losing his father at the age of 12, Alfred took a break from sprinting and later stopped participating in the sport altogether. She only returned to the track thanks to her childhood coach; Modeste goes looking for him in the Cicero community and encourages him to return to sprinting.
Her powers of persuasion paid off a decade later when Alfred won that Olympic final and it was her father she thought of in Paris. “I think of God and my father, who was unable to see me,” she said during her post-race press conference after winning the gold medal. “Dad, this is for you. I miss you. I did it for him, I did it for my coach and for God.
“Usain Bolt was my idol”
Preparing for a final is something all athletes do differently. Some prefer quiet contemplation, others are noisy, trying to scare other opponents or inflate themselves. For Alfred, she returned to her idol Bolt and revisited some of his best moments to visualize her own.
“In sixth grade we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up and I said ‘the Usain Bolt woman’,” Alfred explains. “It’s very cringy to say it now, but I wanted to be like him.
“I grew up watching him, watching all his races. We didn’t have any St Lucians in the race, so I still wanted him to win, I wanted Usain Bolt to win, he was my idol. I admired him.
It was a part of her life that came full circle as she sat in the Olympic Village in Paris: “Even before the Olympics, I had to go back to that inner child and look at how awesome he was and imagine myself as being like him, so I really had to do that the morning of my race, the day of the finals.
“Before the day of the final, I did a lot of visualizations with my coach. So I think at that point, when I woke up, I just wanted to take it to a different level and imagine myself crossing the finish line and just celebrating and being as good as him.
Alfred may be inspired by Bolt, but she took a different approach to stepping into the spotlight. Bolt was known for his trademark celebrations, his many brands and his cheerful personality. Other sprinters like Americans Richardson and Noah Lyles are also known for being outgoing and have attracted a global following to the sport, with their Instagram followers numbering in the millions.
However, Alfred admits she “isn’t too keen on social media”, even though her own audience grew from a modest 30,000 before the Olympics to 154,000 before Netflix’s. Sprint 2. Although she features in the second series of the documentary, Alfred is also unsure if she will watch it, admitting: “I’m not one to listen to myself, when I’m on TV or YouTube, because hearing my voice makes me cringe. A lot.”
It’s clear that the sport itself is Alfred’s passion. She cuts a relaxed figure off the track, smiling and laughing during Telegraph sportAs she prepares for a week in London, but once on the starting line, her concentration is steely.
“It’s almost like an alter ego,” she says. “Sometimes I can just be regular, have a little chat like we do now, or laugh a little with someone and talk so calmly. But when I’m on the track, I don’t talk. I don’t have any friends.
“I don’t care who you are or how good our friendship is outside of athletics, it’s just a completely different mindset and I’m just hungry.”
“I had to adapt to no longer being with any family”
It was this hunger that drove Alfred’s career and led her to move abroad twice before she turned 18.
At 14, Alfred left her friends and family behind to exploit her sprinting abilities in Jamaica. She becomes slightly emotional remembering how difficult it was to leave home when she was “very young”, saying: “First of all, I wasn’t with any family. It’s something I’ve had to adapt to. I don’t think I fully adjusted to being away from my family during the three years I was there.
“But the cultural difference, the language, the environment of sport, sprinting and athletics in general in Saint Lucia, compared to Jamaica, is completely different.”
It was Jamaica’s sporting prowess that won Alfred’s decision, saying: “We hear about Elaine [Thompson-Herah]we hear about Shelly [-Ann Fraser-Pryce]we hear about Usain Bolt, so I think that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go into this industry, knowing that some great people have come out of it.
“As a kid, sometimes you can’t wait to go on an adventure, you’re just curious. I think at that time it was just, “I want to go to Jamaica,” so I wanted to take the opportunity, I took it and I made the most of it.
Three years later, Alfred moved again, this time to Texas to train under Edrick Floréal, a two-time Canadian Olympian. It was another difficult experience as Alfred moved into dorms on her own, but she developed further as a sprinter in National Collegiate Athletic Association events.
“He’s someone who I think was just destined to be part of my journey,” she said of Floréal, who also coaches Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith. She credits the coach for helping her turn the pressure of being watched by an entire country into motivation to keep her promises.
This approach helped her win St Lucia’s first medal at the world championships in March, winning gold in the world indoor 60m in Glasgow, before making even more history at the Olympics.
“To be honest, it still feels surreal to me,” Alfred says of the moment she realized she had won gold. She crossed the finish line with the eighth fastest time in history in the women’s 100m and celebrated her victory by removing her bib, holding it aloft in front of the camera and showing her name, but a few months later, she is thinking about her next goals.
“Unless someone tells me about it or we talk about it, I don’t really think about it. I think now I’ve almost moved on because I’m preparing for another season and there’s a World Championships coming up, so I’ve prepared myself to not be too comfortable now that I won Olympic gold, but I still realize how great what I did in Paris.
Regardless of what else she accomplishes, she has undoubtedly inspired a new generation of Saint Lucian sprinters, just as Bolt inspired her.