“Every time I step onto the track, it's recognition of the hours I've put in and the daily sacrifices I've made,” Richardson says. “When I stand on the starting block, all I have to do is put in the work. I know there will be joy on the other side of the finish line, but I also know that I have to earn that happiness.”
Group Effort
Richardson (center) with, clockwise from left, her sister Tarzina Calhoun, cousins Calvin Harp and Natalie Byers, aunt Brenda Davis, and cousins Anya Davis, Kyle Harp and Bella Harp.
Track and field is one of the great joys in Richardson's life; family is the other. The hardest part of her current training plan, she says, is having precious few opportunities to return to Texas and be with the people who support her. Especially now, with the world's attention once again on her as she heads to Paris, Richardson seems anxious to retreat to Big Mama's house. “When she's here, I try not to be in public,” Harp says. “If Shakari is home, it's private “We spend time together. No one's watching her. We just play cards and mess around with her cousins. We just love her to death.” And we eat the foods Richardson misses when he's in Florida: smoky Harp chicken and potatoes, fatty collard greens, and homemade sausage and eggs on Texas toast.
But make no mistake about Harp. In addition to being a purveyor of home-cooked meals, she also describes herself as the person who gave Richardson extraordinary resilience and tenacity. “Shacarie is tough. I made her tough,” Harp says matter-of-factly. “I'm a strong woman and I've overcome a lot of obstacles in my life. So when things got tough at times and she wanted to quit, I knew what I was saying. And I said, 'Don't start anything and don't finish it.' Once you start, it's over.“No matter what happens, just keep going, OK?” she says, enunciating each word clearly for emphasis.
Richardson is quick to agree with Harp's assessment of her influence. “I owe everything I am to that strong, smart black woman,” she says of Big Mama. “Everything. I mean, I've been blessed. I've had people in my life that helped me, but the foundation is her.”
Richardson is another person she credits with guiding her through her sometimes difficult journey. That contribution is evident when Richardson refers to her aunt as “Mom.” Her high school coach, Cross, did the same. Richardson called her “godmother” and welcomed Cross into her extended family. Cross seemed to function as the yin to Harp's yang. As she points out, her encouragement for Richardson's running career often took the form of telling her to go easy on herself. “Shacarie doesn't need extra pressure,” Cross says. “She puts pressure on herself. So sometimes it was my job to be like, 'One mistake doesn't define you. It doesn't define the outcome.'”
It's a lesson the “better” Shakari seems to have taken to heart. When the conversation inevitably turned to Paris, Richardson admitted she was, of course, nervous. But she quickly got back to talking about all the races she has to run. in front PARIS: The athletics season has just begun, with a slew of events scheduled between now and April, right up to the Olympic opening ceremony on the Seine in July (most of which will be covered by documentary cameras, with Richardson among the Olympic hopefuls in an upcoming Netflix series). Sprint.)
“It's like chess,” explains Richardson, a chess fan. “Every move leads to checkmate. The Olympics is the moment that athletes dream of, it's checkmate, but every race before that is important too, because it's an opportunity to grow, so by the time I'm on the track in Paris I know I've done the trial and error.” In other words, races are won step by step, and the road to Paris is race by race. Her way of releasing the pressure of having to win Olympic gold, she says, is to focus on the present. “Because if I'm always looking ahead, I'm not where I need to be, which is the here and now.”
