On Wednesday morning, Deandre “DeeDee” Montgomery woke up to the news that Sha’Carri Richardson, the 21-year-old Olympic hopeful whose name is on everyone’s lips this week, would definitely not be making a trip to the Olympics Games in Tokyo this year.
For Montgomery, 48, a former sprinter at LSU who qualified for the 1996 U.S. Olympic Games held in Atlanta, the entire saga was just too much. Between the debates about whether marijuana should be considered performance enhancing and whether Richardson’s punishment fit her crime, Montgomery felt something, or rather, someone, was getting lost.
“It was painful to see this going on. The young lady admitted that she made a mistake and took responsibility for her actions. I felt it was so unfair of us to just come down and slam her,” said Montgomery. “How are we going to sit here in judgment of this girl? There has to be a level of grace to this.”
By now, you know the story. Richardson, the world’s fastest woman, tested positive for marijuana after qualifying for the women’s 100 meters in the Olympics. In a televised interview, Richardson said she smoked to cope with news that her biological mother had died, information she learned from a reporter. She received a 30-day suspension and lost her spot in the 100-meter race. As a result, she also had to withdraw from the 200-meter trials.
Fans of the superstar sprinter from Louisiana State University held out hope that Richardson would be granted a spot on the relay team, her last possible path to this year’s Olympic Games, but on Tuesday, American track officials announced that Richardson was not included in the 100-meter relay team.
We can all agree that rules exist and Richardson broke them. The punishment she received was more lenient than the precedent of a 90-day suspension, said Montgomery, but the chatter surrounding Richardson seemed unproductive.
Giving her a free pass probably wouldn’t serve anyone any good, but giving her grace, well, that might bring actual change.
Montgomery’s own experience as a sprinter at LSU and later in the Olympics helped her understand Richardson’s precarious climb to the top of women’s track and field.
Freshman year at LSU, Montgomery, who had received a full athletic scholarship, flunked out. It was her first year away from home, and she spent way too much time living it up, she said. She ended up sitting out a full year. “As a freshman, it was a lot to come in with the pressure of being on this team that had not lost a national championship in umpteen years,” Montgomery said. “I did not use my time wisely.”
But on her return, Montgomery made a remarkable comeback. Her first year of competition at LSU was in 1994. By 1996, she was undefeated in the indoor 60 meters and outdoor 100 meters. She finished third in the 100 meters at the Olympic trials, earning a place on Team USA.
“I got so much grace from my coaches and my family,” Montgomery said. “For me to fight back, it was hard. There were days were I was like, I can’t do this. My coach, my friends and my teammates kept me believing I could do it.”
The upside was that she had made it to the Olympics, but like Richardson, she was passed over for the relay team.
In competition, Montgomery reached the semifinals of the 100 meter at the 1996 Games in Atlanta but was eliminated in sixth place. “I sat in the stands and watched us win the gold medal for the relay in Atlanta,” she said.
Montgomery wasn’t surprised by the decisions of track officials, but she wanted to extend to Richardson some of the grace she had received as a young athlete.
So last Saturday, Montgomery rallied the 60 former LSU Lady Tigers on a group chat and asked them to embrace Richardson by reading an open letter to her. “None of us is excusing what she did but what we ain’t about to do is sit here and let you all throw this child away over one experience,” Montgomery said.
A multi-age, multi-racial crew of about 30 LSU women’s track and field alumni sent in videos that were quickly edited by Sabrina Thompson Mitchell, who ran for LSU before transferring to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. By Sunday, Mitchell had finished the video, and they posted it online. It quickly went viral.
Montgomery is sure to note that they are not calling for a boycott nor will they be boycotting the Tokyo Olympics. As athletes and track fans, they have every intention of watching the new crop of superstars in the making, but they are also making sure that Richardson isn’t left to stand on her own.
As Richardson herself said on Twitter, people are paying more attention to track and field right now.
Montgomery hopes the moment will jumpstart the bigger conversations about grief, coping and antiquated rules around marijuana without tearing Richardson down in the process.
“We just felt that somebody needed to stand in that gap and say nope, that is not what we are going to do to this young lady,” Montgomery said. “She knows she did wrong. We know she did wrong. But that is not what we are going to do right now.”
