Olympic debut a long time coming for Johnson C. Smith alum

In January, Danielle Williams jotted down her most important goal for the year: Make her Olympic debut and compete in the women’s 100-meter hurdles at the 2024 Paris Games.

However, in the last eight years, it appeared to be a tall task for the Jamaican hurdler. The two-time World Athletics champion, who shocked many with her gold medal performances in the 100-meter hurdles in Beijing (2015), and in Budapest, Hungary (2023), failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. Then, Williams struck a hurdle that forced her to stop late in the 100-meter hurdles final at the 2016 Jamaica track and field Olympic trials.

In 2021, the Johnson C. Smith University alum served as an alternate for the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games. So, the goal Williams set in January was more like a continuation of a dream deferred, one she has yearned to bring to fruition.

The 31-year-old will make her long-awaited Olympic debut in the preliminaries for the event starting at 4:15 a.m. ET on Wednesday at Stade de France. In June, Williams finished second in the women’s 100-meter final at the Jamaican Olympic trials with a time of 12:53 seconds to secure her spot in the Paris Olympics and become Johnson C. Smith’s sixth track and field Olympian.

“I’ve always been confident in my abilities,” Williams said. “I know that I can hang with the best of them [elite hurdlers] on my worst days, because I have confidence in God and the gift he’s given me.”

Williams seeks to become the first athlete to win an Olympic medal in the 100-meter hurdles one year after clinching a World Championship title since 2012, when Australian Sally Pearson achieved the feat.

“If she didn’t make the Olympic team [this year], she didn’t want to make any team,” Clemson University hurdles and long sprints assistant coach Lennox Graham, who coached Johnson C. Smith’s track and field team from 2007 to 2017, said. “It was like all or nothing.”

Even when adversity creeps in her lane, Williams remains committed to her craft and keeps her faith in God, which helped her blossom into a champion on and off the track, Graham said.

“We do all we can in preparation [for competition], but God decides if it is a yes, no or wait,” he said. “God wanted her [in Paris] for a reason.”

Williams’ fastest time in the 100-meter hurdles is 12.32, a mark she set in 2019 at the London Diamond League. Her season’s best was at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar, and Eugene, Oregon, where she clocked 12.41 in semifinal heats at both events.

For perspective, fellow Jamaican hurdler Ackera Nugent’s gold-medal time in the Olympic trials in June (12:28) set a Jamaican national record. It was also the world’s second-fastest time this year. When it comes to the Olympics, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico enters the 2024 Paris Games as the reigning gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles after clocking 12:26 at the delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.

As the days of preparation culminate ahead of the competition, Williams remains focused on the future instead of the records she or her competitors earned in their qualifying heats.

“The 100-meter hurdles are cutthroat,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who ran the fastest [in the past]. It’s an empty slate. What you do in the next three races leading up to the finals is what counts.”

Williams’ competitive edge and motivation are unmatched, Graham said. She hates losing, an attribute she picked up as a child while watching her older half sister Shermaine, a former hurdler.

Growing up in Jamaica, running was a carefree hobby for Williams. It was the popular thing to do after school with her friends and her siblings, which include five sisters and a brother.

That all changed when Williams started riding with her father to pick up her sister from track and field practice at Convent of Mercy Academy “Alpha,” a girls high school in Kingston, Jamaica. Williams watched Graham, who was then a high school track and field coach at the nearby all-boys Kingston College, perfect her sister’s craft, and her sister became the catalyst for Williams’ career.

“Winning, breaking records, she [Shermaine] set the trend,” Williams said. “She made me who I am.”

Shermaine Williams, who started hurdling at 13, quickly experienced success under Graham’s coaching, winning a gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles at the U20 CARIFTA Games in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, and a silver medal in the event at the World Youth Championships in the Czech Republic in 2007.

Although Graham was coaching Shermaine Williams in the sport, he noticed “the fire” in Williams’ eyes to be “even better” than her sister, he said.

“She was a really skinny little girl, but she wanted to be great,” Graham said. “I didn’t have to plant the seed because she was already internally motivated.” 

That inner inspiration also stemmed from track and field legends such as Jamaican sprinters Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt and hurdlers Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Delloreen Ennis-London and Brigitte Foster-Hylton.

After Shermaine Williams left Jamaica to follow Graham to Johnson C. Smith on scholarship in 2008, it inspired Williams to follow in her sister’s footsteps, especially after capturing some attention for her fourth-place finish at the 2010 World Junior Championships in Moncton, Canada. But when Williams arrived at the Division II historically Black university in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2011, it was an adjustment.

Though Williams’ talent was undisputed, she hadn’t been pushed beyond her limits or coached by someone who could help her in perfecting the mechanics of her craft. 

“Her practices in high school weren’t even as long as our warmups at JCSU,” Graham said. “She thought the workout was over when we began warming up. She wasn’t thinking of a long-term future [in the sport] yet. She just wanted to beat the people in front of her.”

While graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in business and sports management, she also immersed herself in the culture of being Black in America and taking pride in her “background and culture,” Williams said.

“It [JCSU] definitely prepared me for the world and knowing that I had something to offer to it,” she said.

Williams won 13 CIAA titles, earned 13 All-America honors, captured nine NCAA championships and set multiple Division II records, including the fifth-fastest outing in the 100 meters (11.24) and the second-fastest mark in the 100-meter hurdles (12.89) on her way to being inducted into the JCSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2023.

As Williams takes the grand stage, her career would not be the same without her rivalry with her sister Shermaine.

In 2013, Williams defeated her elder sister for the first time at the Jamaican Championships. In 2015, when the two became the first female siblings to compete in the World Championship final in Beijing, Williams unexpectedly beat her sister, who finished seventh. However, it was Shermaine Williams who consoled her younger sister after the final heat at the 2016 Jamaican Olympic trials, leading to a roller-coaster experience for eight years with the chance to reach the apex of her track and field career.

When the gun sounds at Stade de France, Williams will be ready.

“She’s had so many injuries and setbacks, but she allowed them to build her character,” Graham said. “I’m forever thankful she walked into my doors at JCSU and allowed me to coach her when she could’ve gone anywhere else. 

“Now, we’re in Paris. We will leave everything in God’s hands. When everything is on the line, she’s historically been able to perform at the highest level.”