Shericka Jackson's coach has criticised the LA 2028 women’s 100m schedule, warning that it marks an unfair step backwards for female sprinters.
Shericka Jackson and Kishane Thompson’s coach, Stephen Francis, has slammed the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, which are set to open with the women's 100m.
The opening day will see the women’s 100m be contested in a compressed, single-day format, with all rounds, preliminary, round 1, semifinals, and the final taking place on the very first day of competition, July 15, 2028.
In a significant break from tradition, the women’s 100m is slated to headline the opening night of athletics at the historic LA Memorial Coliseum, pushing the sport to the forefront of the Games' first week.
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However, the schedule is a formidable challenge for the world's top sprinters, who will now have to conserve and manage their energy to peak three or four times in one day, something that Stephen Francis has also harshly condemned.
Stephen Francis Disagrees with Women’s 100m Final Format at LA 2028 Olympic Games
Stephen Francis stated that the structure proposed for the LA 2028 edition reflects a backward turn, arguing that female sprinters have repeatedly been subjected to an excessive competitive load at recent top-tier events.
He explained that this pattern reached a peak when participants in two short-distance races were pushed through several consecutive days of exertion with no pause, even as their counterparts in the other division were granted recovery time between disciplines.
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He maintained that this arrangement mirrors a continuing trend from the sport’s governing authorities, one that, in his view, has repeatedly placed one group of athletes at a clear disadvantage and shows no sign of meaningful correction.
“But it is, unfortunately, a regression to the anti-female scheduling, especially in the sprints which has been on display by World Athletics over the last, I would say, six or so global championships, which have been culminated in 2023, when women who ran the 100 and 200 metres were required to run five straight days, if you were doing the 100 and 200,” Stephen Francis shared in an interview with Television Jamaica.
“The 100 over the first two days and the 200 over the next three without any break, while the men were given a day's break between the 100 and 200. And that has been the kind of scheduling which has come from World Athletics in the not-too-recent past.”
22:33 - 13.11.2025
For the first time in history, all three rounds of the women's 100m at the 2028 Olympics are scheduled to take part on Day 1 of the Games.
Stephen Francis conveyed that he had previously assumed the authorities had finally achieved an equitable timetable at the most recent event, the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan.
However, he now feels the organisers have reverted to long-standing preferences that, in his view, signal disregard toward female sprinters and a lack of interest in ensuring they can deliver peak output.
He suggested that this reversion reflects a deeper bias rather than oversight. He further observed that he and his colleagues possess little influence over these decisions, emphasising that the pattern should be unmistakable to those who create the programme for international meets, making it implausible, in his estimation, that the situation results from oversight or ignorance.
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Melissa Jefferson-Wooden ranked her Prefontaine Classic 100m win over Julien Alfred as one of her season’s highlights, using it to avenge her third-place finish at the Paris Olympics.
“One thought that, OK, it was corrected this year, and it was more fairly balanced this year in Tokyo, but clearly, they have gone back to what I guess is their instinct, that either the women don't matter and getting the best performances from them is not essential for the conduct of the championships or that it was anti-female,” he added.
“They clearly are aware, and it clearly must be a type of strategy that they are using to ensure that female performances are just not as important and that they don't have to make an effort to ensure that the women can perform at their very, very best with the same amount of rest as the men get.”
Stephen Francis’ criticism underscores a broader debate about fairness and the direction of global track and field.
With the LA 2028 schedule reshaping one of the sport’s marquee events, his concerns highlight the need for greater scrutiny of how major competitions are structured, especially when those decisions affect the quality of performances on the world’s biggest stage.