Photographer Luis Alberto Rodriguez [IG] delivers richly well-done images of Olympic runner Sha’Carri Richardson in a sporting fashion story for the Vogue August’s 2024 digital issue. Julia Sarr-Jamois styles the track star inn Ralph Lauren Collection for the cover and slinky white dress, Bode tank top and shorts, and Nike Team USA Olympic leotard and bikers. / Hair by Key Rentz; makeup by Sally Branka; no credit for Richardson’s outstanding talons.

As a kid, the young Richardson was mesmerized by a collection of medals on her grandmother’s wall. Those medals were won by her aunt Shay Richardson, when she was the family track star.

The young Sha’Carri challenged her aunt to races up the street in the South Dallas neighborhood where they lived. “We’d go from the bottom of the hill to Big Momma’s car,” Richardson explains to Vogue’s Maya Singer. [Big Momma, Richardson’s grandmother, raised the track star, along with her aunt Shay.] “And she didn’t slow down, she didn’t let me win. And I think it was in fifth grade, the day I touched the car first. And that’s when I knew.”

Today, that young girl is the world’s fastest runner, based on her performance in the track-and-field world championships in Budapest last August 2023, blazed to a record 10.65-seconds, first-place finish.

Above: Richardson, center, with, clockwise from far left, her sister, Tahjna Calhoun, her cousins Calvin Harp and Natalie Byers, her aunt Brenda Davis, and her cousins Aniyah Davis, Kyle Harp, and Bella Harp.

Richardson won her first Olympic medal today, after suffering the sad suspension for the track star at the Tokyo Games in 2021. News of her biological mother dying, opening deep wounds that never healed, reached Richardson the week before Tokyo. She tested positive for THC in Tokyo but then captured the empathetic hearts of sports fans learning about her life story.

Simply stated, Sha’Carri Richardson has worked her beautiful butt off since Tokyo.

Today was a far happier event for Sha’Carri Richardson, when she won silver in Paris. Was silver — not gold — a surprise? Yes. And her gold medal loss was 1/4 of a second to Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia.

It’s a staggering win for Alfred and St. Lucia—delivering the island’s first Olympic medal of any kind. Melissa Jefferson of Team USA, and Richard’s training partner, finished third for the bronze medal.