Saint Lucia’s sprint sensation Julien Alfred has set her sights on world championship glory in Tokyo as she bids to add the 100 metres crown to her Olympic title.
The 24-year-old stunned the athletics world at the Paris Games last year when she defeated reigning world champion Sha’Carri Richardson, securing her nation’s first Olympic gold medal in track and field. Now, Alfred is hoping to become the first woman since Jamaican legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in 2013 to hold both the Olympic and world 100m titles at the same time.
“Being from a tiny island of 258 square miles with about 180,000 people, it shows no matter where you are from, you can compete on the biggest stage,” Alfred told World Athletics. “You do not need to feel inferior or small to others around you.”
Alfred enters the championships in strong form, having claimed victory at the Diamond League finals in Zurich last month. She admitted, however, that dealing with success has not always been easy. After winning the 60m world indoor title earlier this year, she struggled with depression from the weight of expectations.
“Winning St Lucia’s first global medal made me realise how many people were supporting me. I felt I had to go back on the world stage and repay them, and I was suffocating myself with pressure,” she revealed.
Despite those challenges, Alfred says she is now better equipped to handle the responsibility that comes with being an Olympic champion. “It is a heavy weight for the one who wears the Olympic crown. You feel it,” she said.
Alfred’s journey to the top has been marked by resilience. Following the death of her father, Julian Hamilton, when she was 12, she moved to Jamaica at 14 to pursue athletics in the home of sprint greats like Usain Bolt and Fraser-Pryce. Her Olympic gold was dedicated to her late father.
“Dad believed that I could do it,” she said after her Paris triumph. “He passed away in 2013 and couldn’t see me on the biggest stage of my career, but I know he would be so proud.”
As she prepares for Tokyo, Alfred insists her ambitions go beyond her breakthrough Olympic moment. “I don’t want to get swell-headed and think I’ve made it, because there’s more I want to achieve in life,” she told Olympics.com.
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