The women’s 100 meter dash at the World Championships was a shock to the track and field world. Sha’carri Richardson won the event beating Shericka Jackson after barely making the event final. But if you look closely at the 100 meter final there was a woman in the race who shocked the world herself to get there. Tamari Davis was in the 100 meter final race, and she was only 20 years old at the time. The truth is that Tamari Davis is a track and field prodigy who turned professional at the age of 16 years old. Nobody really knew what to expect, because at the time she arguably wasn’t even the fastest high school girl running out of her home state of Florida. She is now officially a pro, and a World Champion, who is putting the rest of the world on notice in the 100 meter dash. She was always supposed to be this good, and it seems that the time is now for her to prove it on the world stage.

Tamari Davis was a sprinting phenom

Tamari Davis has been one of the greatest talents that America has ever seen on the track for years now. Running out of Gainesville Florida, she broke 12 seconds in the 100 meter dash, and 24 seconds in the 200 meter dash while she was still in just the 7th grade! That is first team national elite if she were at the high school level. But Tamari Davis is from the state of Florida which is incredibly competitive at the high school level. So during her freshman year she lost the state championship meet in the 100 meter dash to Briana Williams. For the record, Briana was in 10th grade at the time, but this was no ordinary high school meet. Briana would go on to become the World Youth Champion in the 100 meter dash, representing Jamaica. She prepared to turn pro shortly after that season, opening the door for Tamari to win the 100 and the 200 at the state meet the following year. Those performances ranked her top 5 in the nation in both events.

How good is Tamari Davis as a pro sprinter?

It was at that time as the number 1 women’s sprint recruit in the class of 2021, that she turned professional signing with Adidas. She was still just 16 years old at the time. Running at the pro level is nothing like high school or college. If you don’t win a Diamond league event, or make team USA for a major international championship, you might as well not have showed up at all. In professional track if you’re not first you might as well be last in the eyes of sponsors and fans. So it took a while for Tamari to work her way up to the front of the race. 2020 was her first year as a pro, but that is a year when she didn’t get to run much for understandable reasons. She ran indoors in the 60 meter dash more than anything else, and won every race she entered except one.

In 2021 she didn’t get to run anywhere near as much as one might expect, perhaps due to injury. She didn’t even make an appearance at the Olympic trials. Track fans tend to have short memories so by the time 2022 rolled around she was no longer mentioned as a 100 meter threat. But in what should have been her freshman year in college, she made the USA championships and finished fourth in the final. That means she just barely missed out on making team USA. But that is a year where she ran as fast as 10.83 wind legal, and she likely would have been the favorite to win the NCAA championships as a freshman in college.

It should be no surprise that in 2023 she came back to the USA championships, this time moving up a spot to finish third. She actually ran faster wire to wire in 2023, than she ever did in her career. She won the Bermuda Grand Prix in the 100 meter dash against a field where she was clearly the youngest in the race. Then later at the World Championships she honestly underachieved in the final. But keep in mind she is still only 20 years old. Even though she wasn’t near the front of the race, what really matters is that she was there on the starting line at all.

The Bottom Line

After all that she became a World Champion leading off team USA to the fastest championship time ever recorded in the 4x100 meter relay. It is uncertain what the future of Tamari Davis’s career will look like. Although all the signs point towards her only continuing to get better. Tamari Davis is a track and field prodigy who has been running with the world’s best at her age ever since she was 14 years old. She turned professional with 2 years of high school left to go, and hasn’t looked back ever since. She climbed the ranks of team USA all the way to becoming a World Champion. When you are as good as Tamari even that accomplishment is simply doing what is expected of you. With the Olympics on the horizon, she knows what she has to do to fulfill the potential that is expected of her. She has to not only make the final, something she has already proven she can do, but leave with hardware when she crosses the line.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, RUN GOOD.

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