In Tokyo last September, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden conquered the world.
At the World Athletics Championships in Japan, the 24-year-old lived up to her billing as favourite when she clocked a championship record of 10.61 to win gold in the women’s 100m, becoming the fourth-fastest woman in history.
It was the crowning moment of a perfect season for the US sprinter, who has steadily established herself as one of the best in the world in the Wanda Diamond League in recent seasons.
The American got her first taste of elite level competition when she made her Diamond League debut in Silesia back in 2022.
At just 21, she finished a respectable seventh as Jamaican legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce stormed to a meeting record of 10.66 at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial.
It was a record which Jefferson-Wooden would later match, but only after soaking up a few more hard knocks in athletics’ premier one-day series.
The US star picked up two more seventh place finishes in Doha and London the following year, before coming in fifth on her first Diamond League appearance on home soil in Eugene in 2024.
Defeats at the highest level only make you stronger, and in 2025, Jefferson-Wooden finally stepped out of the shadows to establish herself as the biggest name in female sprinting.
Returning to Eugene last July, she claimed her first ever Diamond League win with a thumping, 10.75 victory over Olympic champion Julien Alfred.
She followed that up a few weeks later in Silesia, equalling Fraser-Pryce’s meeting record of 10.66 to take her first overseas victory in the series.
In Brussels, she then completed a hat-trick of Diamond League wins with an impressive 10.76.
That was her ninth straight victory in the 100m in 2025, and the sixth time she had gone under 10.8 seconds.
It was also the perfect dress rehearsal for Tokyo, where she arrived as favourite, and walked away as a world champion.
