Melissa Jefferson-Wooden left her mark in the Grand Slam Track, and how! With the first act of the multi-million dollar bonanza now done, she clinched herself the wins in both the 100m and the 200m at the Kingston event. Pocketing a neat $100,000 with the Slam title in short sprints, she also achieved a personal milestone: the 200m race win was her first in nearly three years! No wonder SHE’s smiling the brightest. For starters, Jefferson-Wooden already made a mark when she put behind her competition to clinch the 100m finals. 

Soon after her win, Jefferson-Wooden caught up with the media. She immediately started off with how the competition was stiff already in the Grand Slam Track. Speaking about her rise, the Olympian stated that she was determined to put in the effort and has been getting results since last year.

“I stepped up on the scene last year,” she said. “People kind of remembered who I was. But now, this year, I’m going into it with a statement, just saying, ‘Hey, I’m here. You can count me out if you want, but I’m still going to be here no matter what you may think of me.’” Surely, things are really looking quite bright for the GST champion. Moving on, she also has big dreams about her track career. 

“I want to walk away from track and field forever… I want to go down as one of the greatest athletes to ever do this sport,” announced Jefferson-Wooden in a proud tone. After all, with personal bests of 7.09s and 10.80s in 60m and 100m category respectively, Jefferson-Wooden will be looking to trim some time off too. Likewise, she also vowed to keep grinding and stick around putting her best foot forward. With training partners like Twanisha Terry and Sha’Carri Richardson, the US star sprinter is sure of having her limits pushed in the coming days. 

Thus, having won $100k and being in contention for a bonus, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden’s time is now – and her confidence shows that she knows it. Just a while ago, the 24-year-old broke down her stellar victory in Kingston! 

Melissa Jefferson-Wooden analyses the previously troublesome 200m

In her first appearance since the Paris Olympics, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden won the 100m sprint. But the next event she was slated to appear in was far more difficult – the 200m. Having failed to deliver in that category in the past three years, it was a personal demon. But slay it, she did, ending with a picture-perfect 24 points and an overall dominance score of 44.00 in the Slam rankings. Turns out, she had arrived with a goal.

Later, in an interview with Grand Slam Track, she admitted, “I was definitely more nervous coming into today than I was yesterday. Yesterday was just about me you know focusing on my execution and today was just like trying to stay out of my own head and I think I did that that’s why I got this.” She then broke down her showing at the event.

As the video of her race played, she commented: “Oh it’s not 100 meters okay let’s go… I got right there and I was like ‘Hold on keep your composure, keep your composure… then I could see like Daryl and I really couldn’t see Jason but I could definitely see Daryl in my peripheral and then right here I was just like just fight, fight, fight and I got to the line that’s 100K.”

As to her takeaways from this win for future Slam events – the nearest one being in Miami in May – she simply said: “Just focus on Melissa. I feel like that’s my motto for this year.” Now, with newly-found resilience, the perfect step and her husband’s love and support powering her, Jefferson-Wooden has stepped on a quest to secure back-to-back victories in the upcoming events of GST.