(Castries, Saint Lucia September 14, 2025) Reigning Olympic Champion Julien Alfred once again flew the Saint Lucia flag high, this time in the 100m finals of the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 2025. Alfred raced to a bronze medal in a time of 10.84 seconds, behind Jamaican Tiya Clayton in second with a personal and Season’s best 10.76 seconds and World Champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden who clocked a personal and Championship best of 10.61 seconds, giving her the fourth fastest time in history.
Coming into the Championships, the talk was all about the showdown between Alfred and Jefferson-Wooden, but Clayton ensured that she got into the conversation as a future contender. Alfred will be disappointed with her time, having ran under 10.80 seconds several times for the season, but it was always going to take a mammoth effort to beat the American Jefferson-Wooden who had previously gone sub 10.70 seconds twice this season.
Speaking after the race, Alfred indicated that she was happy even with the bronze medal and cited some issues coming into the final. “Every time I step on the track I’m blessed. The last time I was here I didn’t get a gold medal, but I’m still happy nonetheless…….Yeah I mean I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be quite honest; felt my hamstring a little bit in the warm up area before I came out to the final, so that threw me off a little bit.”
Alfred will now have to put this disappointment behind her and switch her focus to the 200m event, with the heats scheduled for Wednesday September 17, 2025, to be followed by the semi-final on Thursday and the finals on Friday.
Meanwhile, Saint Lucians will also shift focus to Aasia Laurencin, who participates in the Women’s 100m hurdles. The heats are scheduled for later today (Sunday September 14, 2025) at 10:28pm ECT, with the semi-finals on Monday September 15 at 8:05am ECT and the finals just over an hour later at 9:20am ECT.
