After closing out the most successful competitive season of her career to date, 25-year-old Saint Lucian sprinting superstar Julien Alfred isn’t resting on her laurels—even as she prepares for a much-needed break from the track. The 2024 Paris Olympic women’s 100m gold medalist wrapped up her 2026 campaign with a string of landmark achievements that have cemented her status as one of the world’s top sprinters, including new personal bests in both the 100m and 200m events, a Diamond League title, a silver medal at the World Indoor Athletics Championships, and a second-place finish at the season-ending World Athletics Ultimate Championship held in Budapest.
Standing on the track in Budapest after taking silver in the Ultimate Championship 100m, Alfred made clear her immediate plans: step away from competitive training and recharge back home. “I want to enjoy the offseason,” she told reporters. “I just want to go back home to Saint Lucia, spend time on the beach, spend time with loved ones, soak up everything my island has to offer, and not think about track and field at all. I’ll turn my focus to next season when it’s time to get back to work.”
That doesn’t mean the champion isn’t already mapping out her long-term goals. Already, Alfred has her sights set on the 2027 World Athletics Championships, which will be hosted in Beijing, and she plans to return to her training base at the University of Texas to resume work under long-time coach Edrick Floréal when the offseason ends. She will train alongside a growing group of fellow Saint Lucian talents, including Naomi London and Jady Emmanuel, plus Mia Maxwell—the double World Under-20 champion—and her twin sister Mariah.
Alfred is candid about the gaps she still aims to close in her technique, pointing to her opening sprint as a key area of focus for the next training block. “I have a lot to work on, especially the start,” she explained. “It was really inconsistent all this season, so now I know exactly what I need to improve. Having more training partners to line up against in practice will let me get the repetitions I need to lock it in, which is something I felt I was missing this year.”
Compared to her early racing years, Alfred has drastically cut down her schedule in recent seasons to prioritize quality over quantity. In this 2026 “off year” between major championships, she raced just seven times over 100m—one fewer start than in 2025, when she centered her training on building speed endurance. For context, during her final two years of collegiate competition in 2022 and 2023, Alfred competed 30 times combined across both seasons.
One performance in particular stands out as the highlight of her 2026 run: at the Monaco Diamond League in July, she clocked 21.51 seconds in the 200m, a time that now ranks as the fourth-fastest women’s 200m in history. Beyond the numbers, Alfred says her biggest growth this season has come off the track, in her mental approach to competition.
“I’ve been learning how to lose and how to bounce back from disappointing results,” she shared. “I’m not the type anymore to beat myself up after a race doesn’t go how I wanted. Now I’ve become a lot more lenient on myself and give myself a lot more grace.”
year-over-year improvement has been the throughline of Alfred’s career, a trend she attributes directly to her strengthened mental game. “As you’ve seen, every year I’ve progressed. I’ve gotten better every single time I line up, and that’s because my mental game has gotten a lot stronger,” she said. “Now I am a lot more grateful for where I’m at. I know I get a chance to represent an island, a tiny island of only 238 square miles, and that’s always a proud moment for me. I just focus on the positive things in life.”
For Alfred, one of the most meaningful parts of her success is the representation it brings to her home country. She says it means everything that young people in Saint Lucia get to see their nation’s flag raised on the world’s biggest athletic stages. This season even brought a special personal milestone: several members of her family got to watch her compete in person for the first time in Budapest. Now that her 2026 season is complete, she’s most looking forward to extending that precious time with family back home.
“There’s so much more to be grateful for,” she said.