EUGENE --  Thousands watched, but Sha'Carri Richardson ran alone in not just one race Saturday night, but in two. In a lavish stadium built on hallowed ground, under a blue evening sky, she sprinted 100m in 10.71 seconds, the second-fastest time of her career, ostensibly to win the U.S. Olympic Trials for the second* time in three years, and will run in Paris in six weeks as the likely favorite to become the first American woman to win the Olympic hundred since Gail Devers won the second of her two consecutive titles at the Atlanta Games in 1996. That race Richardson ran with seven other women, beating them soundly to the line, including the her training partners, Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha "TeeTee" Terry, who will join her on the Olympic team.

In the other race, in the same stadium under the same pristine sky in front of the same thousands, and over the same 10.71 seconds (fastest time in the world this year) Richardson, 24, did much more. She ran herself into a new present, putting a painful and unpleasant 2021 episode further behind her, and running American track and field potentially 100m closer to a new relevance. She ran with speed, power and with style (also with a third consecutive dawdling start that she beat down with stunning top-end speed) with hair that flew a little like Devers's and fingernails that were long like world-record holder Florence Griffith Joyner's, 36 long years ago.

A step before the finish, she smacked the front of her uniform with both hands -- reminiscent of Usain Bolt's early and stunning celebration in his breakout 2008 world record gold in Beijing -- and then did it again one step past the line.

What was she thinking? "Just: Hard work pays off," said Richardson after the race. "That's all. Hard works pays off."

Those four words are doing some hard work of their own. It was three years ago that Richardson, then 21 years old, won the pandemic-delayed 100m in 10.86 seconds, in orange hair and against a headwind. That performance played like an announcement of greatness to the world, but instead Richardson tested positive for marijuana -- which she admitted using to cope with learning that her biological mother had died while she was in Oregon for the Trials. Richardson was suspended for 30 days, and missed the Olympic Games, a thunderous punishment that could have lingered for years.

The climb back included a shocking failure to advance out of the 100m heats a year later, thus missing the U.S. team for the first World Championships on U.S. soil, here in Eugene in the summer of 2022. But last year, with another worlds ahead, Richardson won the U.S. title and then won the world title in Budapest in a scorching time of 10.65 seconds, elevating her to a tie for the second-fastest U.S. woman in history, behind Flo-Jo's otherworldly (and controversial) 10.49 and (less controversial) 10.61 and 10.62 and Marion Jones's (also controversial, sighhhhhh) 10.65.

But winning these Olympic Trials brought more, a powerful closure. Richardson dove into that topic. "I would say in the past three years I've grown into a better understanding of myself," she said, "and a deeper respect and appreciation for my gifts that I have in the sport -- as well as my responsibility to the people that believe and support me." A mouthful.

And this, in reference to sweeping the Trials podium with two training partners, but also as a measure of her own growth. " It's a full-circle moment to be grateful, appreciative of the duration that we're headed towards and where we've come from. And I'm super excited to continue to grow and build from this momentum that we've already established from here."

Think of this as an alternative plan for track and field.

For years now, going on generations, this foundational Olympic sport has wallowed in its own angst in search of a reinvention or rebranding that would instantly transform it into something else. Something different. Something bigger. Something with more buzz and more money. More meets. Fewer meets. Shorter meets. Mandatory meets. Big venues. Small venues. A league. A league? A league, indeed, the latest -- and potentially most promising -- of which was announced by a group headed by legendary Olympian Michael Johnson.

It all emerges from a place of deep passion, good intentions and more than a little desperation, as hundreds of talented, hard-working athletes try to earn something closer to what a small number of the very best are paid, and all of them would like to be more frequently seen, and more widely known. It is a worthy battle, but also tiresome. A sport generally gets the attention that the marketplace bestows upon it. Track is no different.

But throughout the modern history of track and field, attention is earned not in boardrooms, but on the track. Flo-Jo. Carl Lewis. The aforementioned Michael Johnson. The also aforementioned Marion Jones, before she admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. They had something in common: A greatness that leaped off the television screen and into a viewer's soul. Bolt was not American, but he made people watch track who were otherwise not interested in track.

It's possible that the public's needle on track and field is so deeply buried on meh that no single moment will lift it higher. But consider this: The United States is thought of, and USA Track Nation thinks of itself as, a sprint power, especially in the signature event of the sport, the 100m. Fair enough. By volume, the brag holds up: In the history of the Olympic Games, U.S. men have won 40 medals in the 100m; Jamaica is second with eight. U.S. women have won 18 medals; Jamaica is a much closer second with 16.

But it has been those remarkable 36 years, back to Seoul in 1988, since Americans won both men's and women's 100m in the same Olympics (Lewis and Flo-Jo). And even that moment was deprived of steam, because Canadian Ben Johnson crossed the finish line first in the men's 100m, and was disqualified after testing positive for a steroid. Jones and Maurice Greene swept the 100s in 2000 in Sydney, but the women's 100 gold was "vacated" after Jones's admission.

Last summer at the worlds in Budapest, not only did Richardson win the women's 100m and run on the gold medal-winning 4x100m relay, but Noah Lyles won both the 100m and 200m (and took a third gold in the 4x100m). They are a dynamic pair, a mix of talent and style, the latter of which is, and always has been, vital to elevating a track athlete from medalist to superstar. Flo-Jo and Bolt had it in the extreme; Lewis and Johnson less so; Richardson and Lyles are both magnetic at their best.

Last night at 7:53 p.m. PT, Richardson was the last of the eight finalists introduced to the crowd at the three-quarters-full Hayward Field. She smiled, waved, and folded herself into the blocks. The in-stadium video feed, on large boards at both ends of the field, stayed on Richardson until the gun was fired. Her start was better than in her preliminary heat and in her semifinal 110 minutes before the final. But she was still a little sluggish, and too quick to rise. Thirty meters in, she trailed both Jefferson inside to her left and Aleia Hobbs outside to her right.

But not for long. Richardson's stride is a compact blur when she rises to full upright sprinting. Her top-end speed is like that of two-time Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (Richardson is 5-foot-1; S-A F-P is 5-feet), explosive in a small body. After pounding herself at the line, Richardson ran part way around the turn, and then jogged back to hug her partners. There were tears in her eyes, a new look. 

"I just feel as if it was ... still my exciting normal self," said Richardson. "But more overwhelmed with the emotions of just joy, because of ... the hard work I've put in, not even just physically on the track, but.... mentally and emotionally to grow into the mature young lady that I am today. And I'm going to continue to grow."

Just maybe with a sport on her back.