Sha'Carri Richardson is flying in early season tune-up — and that's great for track and field

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports.  For more information about  CBC's Opinion section , please see the  FAQ .

If you missed Sha'Carri Richardson's blazing-fast 100-metre opener last Saturday, I can't blame you. 

Like many springtime track meets, the Miramar Invitational didn't air on television; if you watched in real time, you were an avid enough track fan to find the live stream. It's the track and field equivalent of a spring training game — major-league talent in an early-season tune-up. Average sports fans don't build their Saturdays around events like that.

Or maybe you missed the race because Richardson finished so quickly. Aided by a brisk tailwind (4.1 metres per second), the 23-year-old sprint star clocked 10.57 seconds. For context, that result is the fourth-best ever, under any conditions, trailing only wind-legal results from Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.60), Elaine Thompson-Herah (10.54), and Florence Griffith Joyner, whose 10.49-second world record is widely believed to have benefited from a busted wind gauge.

(FloJo's wind reading was 0.0 m/s, which nearly never happens. Carl Lewis's sizzling 9.78, run on the same afternoon, on the same track, had a 5.2 m/s tailwind.)

Further context: Richardson beat a world class field by a wide margin.

Either way, the run settled doubts about how she had spent her off season. Apparently, she invested in the first half of her race, building strong early phases to match her eye-popping top-end speed.

But when you're Sha'Carri Richardson posting a big result in a relatively low-stakes meet, questions arise, inevitably.

Too fast, too soon?

Is this the year she finally, finally, finally runs her best races on the biggest