Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce bowed out as arguably the greatest woman sprinter of all time on Sunday — and fittingly she departed with yet another medal.
The 38-year-old Jamaican can leave with her head held high after a silver in the women’s 4×100 metres relay on the final night of the world championships in Tokyo.
“The warrior”, as she likes to refer to herself, has said she would like her legacy to be “the totality of who I am: the mom, the athlete, the entrepreneur, the philanthropist”.
Fraser-Pryce brings down the curtain on a career at the top spanning almost two decades, the last of a generation of extraordinary Jamaican men and women sprinters.
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Just as Usain Bolt led the men — former 100m world record holder Asafa Powell and 2011 100m world champion Yohan Blake — so Fraser-Pryce did with Elaine Thompson-Herah and the older Veronica Campbell-Brown.
Bolt and Fraser-Pryce are very different characters, the former playing to the crowd while Fraser-Pryce is more reserved, her variety of hair colouring — she owns a haircare company — often the furthest she would push it.
“She’s been great for sports in general and I’ve told her, her longevity showed that I could have done it,” Bolt said in Tokyo.
The diminutive Fraser-Pryce, nicknamed “The Pocket Rocket”, which is also the name of her foundation, grew up in a crime-ridden neighbourhood of Kingston.
Those modest beginnings meant she did not showboat as she collected a total of 26 Olympic and world medals, including three Olympic golds and 10 world titles.
She is the third-fastest woman of all time in the 100m with 10.60sec.
However, not even at her peak could she touch the controversial 10.49sec world record of Florence Griffith-Joyner, who was the same age as Fraser-Pryce now when she died in 1998. Doping suspicions hang over that time, although the American never tested positive.
‘Never belonged’
For Fraser-Pryce though, her career has been much more about showing how much women can achieve.
“I want my legacy to be the totality of who I am; the mom, the athlete, the entrepreneur, the philanthropist,” she told Marie Claire magazine this year.
“I want it to be about impact. The impact that I’ve had on and off the track in creating space for other women to understand that they can thrive in life.”
A further ingredient was added when she gave birth to her son Zyon.
Less than two years later in 2019 she was holding him in her arms parading round the stadium in Doha having won another 100m world title.
While her family shared her and husband Jason’s delight they — like everyone else — had been kept in the dark about her pregnancy.
“For a lot of us here in Jamaica, we are already battling with our insecurities of not feeling like we belong, and not feeling like we are worthy,” Fraser-Pryce explained to Marie Claire.
“But I’ve always had the mentality, I’m just gonna work my way back.
“That’s how we grew up. That’s how my resilience became so strong.
“I always thought, nobody’s gonna give me anything. I have to make you see that you need me.”
However, she says being a mother made her feel reborn as an athlete.
“I think being a mom has really fuelled me,” she said last month.
“My son is my biggest motivation. I think competing after I had my son, for women, it teaches us that our dreams don’t end when we become mothers.
“If anything, they add value to our dreams and our goals, what we are chasing.”
Fraser-Pryce has also learned from her upbringing. She says she had a happy childhood despite growing up in poverty, sharing a bed with her two siblings and her mother.
Having overcome adversity herself, she has funded academic scholarships to help others.
“I know what it feels like to have the dream but lack the resources,” said Fraser-Pryce.
As Fraser-Pryce, her hair in the Japanese colours for this final appearance, took her final post-race questions, she had no regrets.
“I feel special,” she said. “I feel honoured to have been able to grace the track.
“But it has been a privilege to be able to finish my career in this way.”