The 300m is rarely the feature race at an athletics meet, but a partisan Saint Lucian crowd at the Ansin Sports Complex in Broward County, Florida, got more than their money’s worth on Saturday. Olympic 100m champion Julien Alfred triumphed over Jamaican world and Olympic champion Shericka Jackson in the women’s three-quarter lap at the fourth Miramar Invitational. The 23-year-old Alfred had to dig deep to overcome the challenge of the 30-year-old Jackson, who was making her return from injury.
In what was almost certainly her last over-distance race of the year, Alfred clocked 36.05 seconds, setting a new Saint Lucian national record and moving to 28th on the all-time list. She had previously run 36.16 on a 200m track in February, winning at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix.
This time, running from Lane 4 with Jackson in Lane 3, Alfred got off to a solid start and broke the stagger on Ivory Coast’s Jessika Gbai by the 50m mark. Jackson, a former quarter-miler, caught up to the Saint Lucian champion (a 200m silver medallist at Paris 2024), and the two were shoulder to shoulder coming off the bend. But as they entered the home straight, the younger of the two Caribbean stars surged ahead for the win.
Jackson, the world’s fastest woman over 200m, finished second in 36.13, Gbai was third in 36.24, and Barbados’ Sada Williams fourth in 36.49.
Alfred and her coach, Haitian-born Edrick Floréal, will now shift focus to the standard 100m and 200m distances, with an eye on excelling at September’s World Championships in Tokyo. It has been confirmed that the superstar from Ciceron will compete at the Bislett Games in Oslo (June 12) and the BAHAUS-galan in Stockholm (June 15), both part of the 2025 Wanda Diamond League circuit. Alfred is the reigning Diamond League champion in the women’s 100m.
