Richards – ‘I enjoyed every step of my race’

Berlin, Germany – It was the dethroned champion Christine Ohuruogu who put it best. “It was a good run and a brilliant time. I think she just wanted it more than the rest of us.”

World number one for the last five seasons, but never a champion, Sanya Richards finally got it right when it mattered most as she took her first major championships gold at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Berlin in superb style.

After the heartbreak of the Olympic final in Beijing last year, when she was overhauled by Ohuruogu in the finishing straight, and the misery of missing 400 qualification for the Osaka World Championships two years ago, the Jamaican-born American at last fulfilled the promise of her world billing on the biggest stage.

Yes, she wanted it all right. She wanted it bad.

Richards had looked tense on the start line, and appeared at first to go off too fast – as she did in Beijing – but the glamorous 24-year-old judged her race perfectly this time and was smiling with joy and relief before she’d even crossed the finish line.

It was a look that told the tale of her last four years, a look of relief that all the frustration, doubts and worries had come to an end, that all the expectations, hopes, and, most of all, pressure, had at last led to gold.

“I thought ‘Yes, finally’,” said Richards. “Finally I have a major title. Finally the hard work has paid off. To finally come across the finish line and not be disappointed is such a wonderful feeling.”

Gone were the sleek, go-faster sleeves she’d worn at the Olympics, as Richards –in bright red spikes – clocked her 38th sub-50 time (more than any other athlete in history), stopping the clock at 49-dead, the quickest in the world this year. It could have been quicker if this celebrity of American track and field hadn’t allowed herself to skip through the line, so pleased was she to have finally won the global title her dominance of the event surely deserves.

Moments later she was dancing with joy, literally. “It’s called the ‘Dallas Boogie’,” she explained later to the curious press when she was asked about her victory jiggle, as her watching mother, Sharon, and father, Archie, plus a whole entourage of grinning family members, giggled in recognition.

“I do it all the time at home in front of my family,” said Richards, who describes herself as a bit of a singer and dancer on her website. “It’s a Texas thing. I told my sisters if I won I was going to do it, so I thought, ‘Well, here goes. I’m better do it.’

“I don’t know if I jumped across the line or what I did. I just wanted to get there first whatever it took – a skip, a bound, or whatever. ”

Richards clearly likes Berlin’s Olympiastadion, and it’s deep blue-ovalled track in particular, as she has won here three times in the last four years over 400m, most recently at the ISTAF Golden League meeting in June.

“It feels so great to finally hear my name announced as world champion and I can now say my first title was on the blue track here,” said Richards. “I didn’t have much doubt before this race. I thought about all the positive experiences I’ve had on this blue track. I feel so comfortable running here.”

Indeed, she’d looked comfortable all week, sailing smoothly through the rounds with easy victories in 51.06 and 50.21. Many observers wondered if the experiences of 12 months ago would again bring her down in the final, especially when Jamaica’s Shericka Williams, the Olympic silver medallist who was second again here, produced the fastest ever 400m semi in 49.51.

Like Ohuruogu, Williams is renowned for her strong finish so Richards knew she’d have to get her tactics right. As Ohuruogu put it, “The pressure was on her to win a title more than for me to lose it.”

And Richards herself admitted the stress-induced condition, Behçet syndrome, which hampered her season two years ago, from did “flare up” this week as her own expectations grew and grew.

“It does come on when I get stressed but I know how to handle it now so I didn’t let it get in my mind and I was able to concentrate,” she said. “I think pressure did get to me in the past and that’s what I wanted to shake this time. I was confident in my rounds and in my race strategy.”

Despite being the IAAF’s Athlete of the Year in 2006, and the youngest woman ever to break 49-seconds, many have questioned Richards’ tactical nose in major championships.

After finishing fourth in the 2004 Olympic final, she was a favourite at the 10th World Championships in Helsinki four years ago, when she finished second, and was again at last year’s Olympics, when she had to settle for bronze. She was also second at the 2002 World Juniors and fifth over 200m in Osaka.

This time, though, she ran precisely to plan. The difference, she says, is confidence.

“I did go out well in the Olympics,” she said. “But today my split was 23-flat so it was almost the same. I don’t think I went too fast last year but this time I was really confident in my strategy. I enjoyed every step of my race tonight.

“I would love to have won the Olympics but sometimes you have to learn things to grow, and I think I’m a better athlete because of it.”

Richards added that a lot of credit should go to her coach Clyde Hart, famously guide to Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner, for making her more consistent and getting her to the start line with greater self belief.

Now she has a World Championships gold medal to place alongside the Super Bowl ring won by her boyfriend Aaron Ross, cornerback with the 2008 Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants.

Not that she’s satisfied yet.

“I’m only 24,” she said. “I have time. Lots of 400m runners are at their best when they’re 31 or 32 – look at Michael Johnson. 2009 is just the start.”