Who is Elaine Thompson-Herah's husband? Jamaican sprinter breaks FloJo's 33-year Olympic record
Elaine Thompson-Herah can easily be considered one of the greatest sprinters to ever grace the Olympic track. The 29-year-old star athlete carried forward the Jamaican legacy of 100m sprints as she won the event at Tokyo 2020 Games beating all odds. And while her accolades have been well documented, little is known about her personal life, especially her relationship with doting husband Derron Herah.
Elaine managed to better her fellow Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce to secure gold with a new Olympic record of 10.61 seconds. She had previously won gold at the Rio 2016 Olympics but wasn't able to make a podium finish ever since then -- finishing 4th at the 2019 world championships.
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Who is Elaine Thompson-Herah's husband?
Elaine tied the knot with her longtime boyfriend Derron Herah on November 2, 2019. The couple kept much of their relationship private before Elaine announced their wedding to the world. She inundated social media with pictures of the ceremony and wrote an emotional message for her husband.
“I have a best friend as a husband, and he is my number one supporter," she wrote. "He’s a family man, and he’s always giving back to God. That is what makes him a beautiful man. We’re not perfect by any means, but that makes us beautiful as well. We’re not afraid to say we’re not perfect. We have our disagreements, but that comes along with marriage,” she added.
Derron, like his wife, was also a professional Jamaican athlete at one point, before he became a coach. The 39-year-old is a former St Jago athlete and also attended Southwest Christian Junior College and Texas Tech University. Thompson adopted her husband's family name after the marriage, and is now known as Elaine Thompson-Herah.
The 29-year-old Olympic sensation broke Florence Griffith Joyner's 33-year-old Olympic record in the women's 100 meters on Saturday, July 31. She pointed at the scoreboard even before crossing the finish line in 10.61 seconds, beating Griffith Joyner's old record of 10.62 set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, ESPN reported.
Thompson-Herah also beat her top rival, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, by 0.13 seconds. Meanwhile, Shericka Jackson won bronze in 10.76 seconds. It's worth noting that no Olympic sprinter had broken the 10.7 since FloJo. As Thompson-Herah approached the finish, she said she wasn't sure if she would do it. But "I knew that I won," she said after the win. "The pointing, I don't know what it means. To show that I was clear," she added.
It's worth noting that this was the first female-led Jamaican sweep of medals since the 2008 Beijing Games, when the feat was overshadowed by the record-setting performance of legendary sprinter Usain Bolt. According to ESPN, Jamaican women actually have a longer history of sprint success than the men. In the 2008 race, Fraser-Pryce finished on top and completed her Olympic set in the 100m race, in which she now has two golds ('08, '12), a silver and a bronze ('16) to her name. That said, Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah will likely face each once again in the 200, where Thompson-Herah is currently the defending champion.
