PARIS — Smiling with her hands on her hips, Gabby Thomas looked like she had just strolled the Champs-Élysées instead of running the 200-meter Olympic semifinals in a blazing 21.86 seconds.
Then she waved to the crowd at the Stade de France — a good-bye as well as a promise that she would return Tuesday night to race for the gold medal on the lavender track.
“I’m executing everything according to plan,” Thomas said. “When I see the finish line in my sights, I just have that boost to get there.”
Three years ago in Tokyo, Thomas won two Olympic medals: a silver in the 4 x 100-meter relay and a bronze in the 200. Now she’s the overwhelming favorite for her first Olympic gold.
Thomas, 27, who spent the first 12 years of her life in Atlanta, would be the third woman from the metro area to capture an Olympic crown in the half-lap race. Edith McGuire was the 1964 Olympic champion and Gwen Torrence won the title in 1992. The last U.S. woman to win the 200 was Allyson Felix in 2012 in London.
Thomas is already the fourth-fastest woman of all time with a best of 21.60 seconds from the 2023 U.S. national championships. The late Florence Griffith-Joyner is the only American woman who has run faster, clocking 21.34 seconds at the 1988 Olympic Games.
The flamboyant Sha’Carri Richardson garnered the lion’s share of publicity in the run-up to Paris, but Thomas was also racking up victories. The Harvard graduate who earned a masters degree in public health at Texas raised her profile off the track as well. She appears in a national campaign for Toyota and, like Richardson, is one of the featured athletes in the Netflix docuseries, “Sprint.” The six-episode show leads up to the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, where Thomas won the silver medal behind Shericka Jackson of Jamaica. Jackson’s time of 21.41 seconds is the closest any woman has come to FloJo, and eclipsed the Jamaican record of 21.53 run by Elaine Thompson-Herah at the Tokyo Olympics.
But while Jackson has struggled this season and withdrew from the Olympic Games due to injury moments before the first round. Thomas has been thriving. She posted the fastest time this year of 21.78 at the Olympic Trials.
In Sunday’s first round at the Games, Thomas cruised to the fastest time of 22.20 seconds.
Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia, who won the first semifinal in 21.98 seconds, is the only other woman to dip under 22 seconds at the Paris Olympics. Alfred has already earned the title of fastest woman in the world after dominating the women’s 100.
In the second semi, Thomas faced former world champion Dina Asher-Smith of Great Britain. Running in adjacent lanes, they were close until Thomas roared around the turn and easily pulled away with about 70 meters to go. She defeated Asher-Smith by a whopping .45 seconds. Brittany Brown of Team USA, the 2019 world silver medalist, won the third semi in 22.12. The third American in Paris, Mckenzie Long, the NCAA champion from Ole Miss, also advanced to the final.
Jessika Gbai of Ivory Coast, Daryll Neita of Great Britain and Favour Ofili of Nigeria complete the field.
Thompson-Herah, who won the 100 and 200 in both 2016 and 2020, has also been hampered by injuries this year and did not make the Jamaican team. Niesha Burgher and Lanae-Tava Thomas did not advance past the Olympic semifinals.
Thomas will be competing in her second straight Olympic 200 final. At her first Olympic Trials in 2016, she finished sixth. “I was really just a baby, so new to the sport, I didn’t even know how Olympic Trials worked,” Thomas told teamusa.org. “I didn’t have intentional dreams for track and field the way that I do now.”
And everything, so far, is going according to plan.
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