Julien Alfred, already among sprinting’s elite, begins her assault on the 60-metre record in February.
Alfred, the joint second-fastest woman ever over the distance, will start her season at the Millrose Games, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold event, at New York City’s The Armory on February 1.
The 2024 World Indoor Champion over 60m has a personal-best of 6.94 seconds, just two hundredths of a second from Irina Privalova’s record.
Having focused on the Tokyo World Championships in 2025, Alfred did not compete in the 60 metres at all this year. Her season ended with her withdrawing from Tokyo due to an injury. But that was only after taking bronze in the 100m, the event in which she won an unprecedented Olympic gold in 2024. In 2026, however, she has no major global outdoor championships.
“I love the 60m,” she told the CITIUS MAG podcast. “I did the 60m a lot in college and also my first year as a professional athlete. And it’s really a fun year for me doing the things that I actually love and enjoy. And considering that the 60m is something I really love, I decided that it was going to be part of my plans for 2026. I’m really looking forward to competing in the 60m again after running a 300m and 400m indoors. So I’m actually really excited.”
Presently vacationing and training at home in Saint Lucia, Alfred has declared it her goal to break Privalova’s record, which has stood for over 32 years.
Alfred is set to take on a pair of Americans at the Millrose Games. Aleia Hobbs shares that time of 6.94, and Millrose defending 60m champion Jacious Sears will line up as well. Alfred’s former training partner, Dina Asher-Smith of Great Britain, is also in the lineup.
Alfred holds the meet record of 6.99 seconds from 2024, one of her five times under seven seconds, behind Privalova’s 13 times. Iconic Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey ran that fast four times. Legendary American sprinter and hurdler Gail Devers went under seven seconds three times.
In a recent interview, Alfred revealed that she and coach Edrick Floréal had spent time in 2024 “looking at the different increments of the world record in the 60m and just how she ran it and her first 10 metres. I think that’s when it really started trying to analyse every single thing. I think that’s when I started paying attention to the way I run and just analysing, like my race pattern.”
Back in 2020, whilst she was at the University of Texas, Alfred became the third-fastest teenager over 60m. But her season ended early due to the COVID pandemic, on the eve of the collegiate national championships.
As she moves into her third year as a professional, after a storied career at Texas, Alfred has been back in training since early November, following visits to England and Germany as a Saint Lucia tourism ambassador.
(TF)
