The 51st running of the Prefontaine Classic, a meet that always delivers both top-tier talent and absurd depth, had a big problem in the women’s 100m this year: there are too many women who are very good at the 100m.

Athletes like Tia Clayton (10.82 PB), Kayla White (10.84 PB), and Amy Hunt (2x British champ over 100m) found themselves on the outside looking in of the final as it took two stacked heats before the TV window to even decide who would toe the primetime start line. With two World champs, five of the seven fastest women of 2026, and four of the ten fastest women of all time on the entry list, the race was more stacked than many a World or Olympic final.

There were plenty of rich narratives, too. A generational battle—between the up-and-comers (Tina Clayton, Shawnti Jackson, and Adaejah Hodge) and the veterans (Shericka Jackson and Dina Asher-Smith), the Americans versus the Jamaicans, the Americans versus the Brits, and of course, a clash of training group alphas as Star Athletics’s two brightest stars, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Sha’Carri Richardson, both entered in fine form.

Longtime Richardson followers know her race is often decided in the first few steps: she is not the best starter in the world by any means, and when she’s off her game she can lay down some real clunkers out of the blocks. On the other hand, if she gets to her drive phase within spitting distance of the lead, she’s very, very dangerous in the back half. So when Richardson got the jump on Jackson and Jefferson-Wooden to her right, it was clear she’d be tough to beat.

Instead, Jackson and Hodge struggled mightily out of the blocks, and while Hodge still closed like a freight train to move up through the field, neither was able to challenge Richardson. No, it was her training partner and three-time World champ MJW who had the gears to beat her to the line. Jefferson-Wooden leaned her way to a 10.78 season’s best, just 0.01 ahead of Richardson.

A lot of hay is being made in sprint circles around Richardson’s general aversion to leaning at the line, but whether or not you think that made the difference in the race, the net result was that Jefferson-Wooden kept her 100m win streak alive: she hasn’t lost a race at the distance since taking bronze in the final in Paris.

After the finish line, Jefferson-Wooden was, for lack of a better term, fired TF up. Off the track, the American is polite and low-key, arguably one of the softer-spoken pro sprinters on the circuit. But in the heat of competition she gets as animated as anyone else in the whole stadium, glad to continue her run of dominance despite sharing in pre-race interviews that she’d had a less-than-ideal spring of training.

Richardson, who’s known for her showboating ways and high-energy presence, was more restrained this time around, but nevertheless looked pleased to have dropped her second sub-10.80 of the season. Despite her 10.65 PB and prodigious talent, this is only Richardson’s third season of dipping under the 10.8 barrier more than once. The others were her 2023 campaign that ended in a World title and her 2021 season that saw her win the Olympic Trials before her unfortunate post-facto disqualification. Early on this season, there were some questions around her health and fitness, but they’ve all been answered now.

This is arguably only the second season when both sprinters have been in top form at the same time. If you count the results from 2021, either Jefferson-Wooden or Richardson has won the 100m at the last five U.S. Championships, but MJW didn’t break 11 seconds in either 2021 or 2023 and Richardson only dipped below the barrier once last year. 2024, where both women landed on the podium in Paris, was the only season we’ve gotten prime Melissa vs. Sha’Carri to date. Sha’Carri has the lifetime edge in the 100m 6-5, but Sha’Carri got out to a 6-0 start and now Melissa has won their last five matchups. Now, the gap is literally one race and 1/100th of a second.

With the two best Americans in recent years performing their best right now, the 2026 national title at USAs will not come easy for anyone. On the international scene, the addition of Hodge and the resurgence of Jackson and her countrywoman Elaine Thompson-Herah virtually guarantees that no Diamond League or World Ultimate Championship will be a cakewalk. And that’s not even factoring in the Claytons, who are still just 21 years old, Pre fourth-placer Jonielle Smith, who got a PB of 10.89 in third, or… Olympic champion Julien Alfred, the only athlete in the world who’s shown she can beat both Richardson and Jefferson-Wooden at their best.

This is the best of track: a bevy of emotions, drama, and intrigue packed into nine lanes and ten seconds of racing. The time and the place matters: With all these young women running as well as they are, the 10.60 barrier—cleared only by two women in history—will inevitably see a battering any week now. And yet, at any given meet one of them could drop a top-ten all-time mark and not win.

So pick your fave and lock in. Because whether you want to see a rematch of the Star stars, a Jamaican revenge tour after getting shut out of the top-three at Pre, or a World vs. Olympic champ showdown for the ages, it’s coming. With each impending race, the plot only thickens, and even without the traditional prizes on offer this year, the bragging rights alone will take on a historic significance given the level of competition. They’re only just getting started.

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