Olympic gold medallist Julien Alfred was this week recognised by one of the sport’s legends, Gail Devers, who named the 23-year-old Saint Lucian on her contemporary international 4x100m women ‘s dream team, a team she says would be unbeatable.
Appearing on the Ready Set Go programme with Olympic gold medalist Justin Gatlin and Rodney Green, Devers spoke at length about her illustrious career, including her battle with Grave’s Disease, her triumphant return to the sport, and her iconic long nails.
A World Champion in the 60m, 100m, and 100m hurdles, Devers’ Olympic 100m gold at Atlanta 1996 made her the first woman to retain that tile since Wyomia Tyus in 1968. She also won the 4x100m along with Chryste Gaines, Inger Miller, and Gwen Torrence.
Gatlin usually asks guests on Ready Set Go to name their all-time dream relay teams, normally including themselves. Devers declined to take up a spot, but said that of current athletes, she would line up Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Saint Lucia’s Alfred, Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith, and World Champion Sha’Carri Richardon of the USA.
“Obviously, Sha’Carri.. they’re going to give her a lead, but do I want to see her go and get somebody? I like when she does that and look to the side. Let her go anchor.
“I want Mommy Rocket [Fraser-Pryce] out the hole… and then I got Julien Alfred… So I got somebody from the US, got somebody from Jamaica, somebody from Saint Lucia. I got to find somebody else. Dina Asher-Smith, and that’s the relay.
“And we taking on anybody else in the world. We got this platinum medal, they got to make up a medal for us, because we’ve surpassed gold.”
Devers also selected Wilma Rudolph, world record holder Florence Griffith Joyner, Evelyn Ashford, and Tyus as her all-time USA team.
The world record for the sprint relay was set at the 2012 London Olympics, by the USA quartet of Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight, and Carmelita Jeter, running 40.82 seconds for gold.
Alfred has not had much opportunity to run relays since her time as a collegiate athlete ended in 2023. She has run on a handful of occasions with her training group. But the prospect of being a part of a relay in national colours is not far-fetched.
Saint Lucia currently has national record holder for the Under-18 200m Naomi London enrolled at the University of Texas. All-American hurdler Aasia Laurencin, the nation’s next best ranked female athlete, is a graduate student-athlete at the University of Michigan.
The path to a Saint Lucia relay at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, World Relays, or even the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 will likely include a combination of homegrown talent and emerging athletes from the diaspora.
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