by 
Before leaving primary school, Julien Alfred had a goal in mind: being “the feminine Usain Bolt”. Sitting in a hotel in Kensington, decorated with an Olympic gold necklace and ring and, above all, after winning the 100 -meter gold medal in Paris this summer, this dream has come true.
Alfred was an outsider and a relatively 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 previous year and was the favorite. , while no origin from Sainte-Lucie had never won a Olympic medal, whatever its color. Only 10.72 seconds later, the Caribbean island had a new hero and Alfred’s life has completely changed.
“Crazy” is the word that the 23 -year -old uses to describe the period that has passed from Paris. She speaks to Telegraph Sport After arriving in London on a flight from a post-Olympic award ceremony in Portugal and adds: “[It’s been a] A whirlwind, of course, but I felt a lot of love and support from many people in recent months, from Sainte-Lucie, from the whole world, the Caribbean … on the whole, It was a great feeling.
Sainte-Lucie has less than 200,000 inhabitants and participated for the first time in the Olympic Games in 1996 in Atlanta. Despite the sending of athletes to disciplines such as athletics, swimming and sailing, the nation had seen no one get on the podium before Alfred.
It is not surprising that the Caribbean Nation did everything to celebrate Alfred’s exploits (she also won money in 200 m). This includes a national day Julien Alfred on September 27, when a full-to-crack crowd attended a free concert at Daren Sammy Cricket Ground, a stadium named after another famous Saint-Lucien sportsman.
A section of the Millennium highway has been renamed Julien Alfred motorway; She received a reward of a million dollars from the government, as well as a 10,720 feet land, commemorating her victory. Alfred’s face will also appear in a series of exercise notebooks and a stamp will be created in commemoration.
When asked if his current life is different from that of before Paris, the answer is simple: “Certainly. I am more recognized in person and wherever I travel. Even family members. Now people know that they are my brothers and sisters, they are also recognized and they are approaching in town, at work, so that has changed their lives too.
“It has become really competitive in primary school”
Alfred’s sports course has started in primary school. She remembers having run for her color house at the Ciceron RC combined school in Castries, the capital of Sainte-Lucie: “Run against young girls, and even boys sometimes, when it was really competitive in my primary school – I think it was my first memory. sprint.
His life could have taken a very different direction without some key interventions. Alfred’s talent was not recognized by an athletics coach but by the Brenda Virgil school librarian. She presented Alfred to coach Cuthbert Modes (also known as TWA Ti ne) and, from the age of nine, training has become more regulated during the following three years.
However, after losing his father at the age of 12, Alfred took a break in the sprint and then completely stopped participating in this sport. She only returned to the track thanks to her childhood coach; Modest part in his research in the Cicero community and encourages him to return to the sprint.
Her power of persuasion borne fruit a decade later when Alfred won this Olympic final and it was her father that she thought in Paris. “I think of God and my father, who could not see me,” she said during her post-race press conference, after winning the gold medal. “Dad, it’s 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 that all athletes do differently. Some prefer a quiet contemplation, others are noisy, trying to make the other opponents psyche or to swell. For Alfred, she returned to her idol Bolt and revisited some of her best moments to visualize hers.
“In sixth year, we were asked what we wanted to do when we are tall and I replied” the Usain Bolt woman “,” explains Alfred. “It’s very creaky to say it now, but I wanted to be like him.
“I grew up looking at him, looking at all his races. We had no St-Lucien in the race, so I always wanted him to win, I wanted Usain Bolt to win, it was my idol. I admired it.
It is a part of her life that completed the loop when she was sitting on the Olympic village in Paris: “Even before the Olympic Games, I had to come back to this inner child and watch how great it was and imagine myself Like being like him, so I really had to do this in the morning of my race, the day of the finals.
“Before the day of the final, I had made a lot of visualizations with my coach. So I think that at that time, when I woke up, I just wanted to go to a different level and imagine crossing the finish line and simply celebrating and being as good as him.
Alfred is perhaps inspired by Bolt, but it has adopted a different approach to put itself in the fire of the ramp. Bolt was known for his brand celebrations, his many brands and his playful personality. Other sprinters such as Americans Richardson and Noah Lyles are also known to be extroverted and have attracted a global audience to this sport, with their Instagram subscribers who count by millions.
However, Alfred admits that she “does not really like social media”, even if his own audience went from a modest 30,000 before the Olympic Games at 154,000 before that of Netflix. Sprint 2. Although she appears in the second series of the documentary, Alfred does not know either if she will look at him, admitting: “I am not the type to listen to myself, when I am on TV or on YouTube, because Hearing my voice makes me cringe. A lot.”
It is clear that sport itself is Alfred’s passion. She displays a relaxed silhouette outside the track, smiling and laughing during Telegraph SportWhile she is preparing for a week in London, but once on the starting line, the concentration is steel.
“It’s almost like an alter ego,” she says. “Sometimes I can be just regular, have a little conversation as we do now, or laugh a little with someone and speak so calmly. But when I’m on the track, I’m not talking. I have no friends.
“I don’t care who you are or the quality of our friendship outside of athletics, it’s just a completely different state of mind and I’m just hungry.”
“I had to adapt to the fact that I no longer be with any family”
It was this hunger that motivated Alfred’s career and led her to move abroad twice before his 18th birthday.
At 14, Alfred left her friends and family behind her to exploit his Sprint capacities in Jamaica. She becomes slightly moved by remembering how difficult it was to leave the house when it was “very young”, saying: “First of all, I was with no family. This is something I had to adapt. I do not think I have fully adapted to being far from my family during the three years that I spent there.
“But the cultural difference, the language, the environment of sport, sprint and athletics in general in Sainte-Lucie, compared to Jamaica, are completely different.”
It is the sports prowess of Jamaica who have earned the decision of Alfred, who declares: “We hear about Elaine [Thompson-Herah]We hear about Shelly [-Ann Fraser-Pryce]We hear about Usain Bolt, so I think that is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to this environment, knowing that big ones came out.
“As a child, you sometimes look forward to going on an adventure, you are just curious. I think that at that time, it was just “I want to go to Jamaica”, so I wanted to seize the opportunity, I seized it and I pulled the best party.
Three years later, Alfred moved again, this time in Texas to train under the direction of Edrick Floréal, Double Olympien Canada. It was another difficult experience when Alfred moved alone in dormitories, but she developed more as a sprinters in the events of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
“He is someone who, in my opinion, was just intended to be part of my trip,” she said about Floréal, who also takes the British Dina Asher-Smith. She thanks the coach for helping her transform the pressure of being monitored by an entire country into a motivation to keep his promises.
This approach helped her win the first medal in Sainte-Lucie at the world championships in March, winning gold at the 60m in the world in Glasgow, before entering history even more at the Olympic Games.
“To be honest, it always seems to me surreal,” says Alfred about the moment she realized that she had won gold. She crossed the finish line with the eighth fastest time in the history of the female 100 m and celebrated her victory by removing her bib, holding him in the air in front of the camera and showing her name, but A few months later, she thinks of her next goals.
“Unless someone tells me or talk about it, I don’t really think about it. I think now I have almost turned the page because I am preparing for another season and there are world championships approaching, so I have prepared to be too comfortable now than I ‘I won Olympic gold, but I still realize how great what I did in Paris.
Regardless of what she accomplishes elsewhere, she undoubtedly inspired a new generation of Saint-Lucian sprinters, just as Bolt inspired it.
