U.S. Olympic champion sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson is copping a plea from the public after an ugly incident that involved her assaulting her boyfriend at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport last month and being booked on a charge of misdemeanor fourth-degree domestic violence assault. But the public absolution she’s seeking via social media mea culpa may not be what the talented 25-year-old champion needs most. For her sake, one hopes she engages in a deeper, less public, reflection about how she might safeguard her career by making fewer mistakes off the track.

One hopes she engages in a deeper reflection about how she might safeguard her career by making fewer mistakes off the track.

Security footage of the July 27 scene at the airport shows Richardson shoving her boyfriend, Olympic sprinter Christian Coleman, into a wall and throwing something at him as the couple walked through a terminal. Though she was shoving him in full view of dozens of witnesses, including TSA agents working nearby, bodycam footage captured Richardson lying to the responding officers that she hadn’t touched Coleman. Even worse, she was recorded telling an officer, “I can definitely have evidence of him assaulting me, if possible.” It’s unclear what that refers to, as none of the surveillance footage shows Coleman making contact with Richardson.

An officer who submitted a report of the incident wrote, “I was told Coleman did not want to participate any further in the investigation and declined to be a victim.”

“She’s a human being and a great person,” Coleman, 29, later said of the woman he described as “the best female athlete in the world.” He said, “Does she have things that she needs to work on for herself? Of course. But so do I. So do you. So does everybody. And I’m a type of guy, I’m in the business of extending grace and mercy and love.”

Four days after Richardson was arrested, but before news of her arrest had been made public, she ran what Nick McCarvel at Olympics.com described as “a strong showing” in the 100 meters heats. But then the news of her arrest was released, and she withdrew from the rest of the 100 meters competition. She also initially withdrew from the 200 too, but reconsidered and missed qualifying for the final by a hundredth of a second.

All is not lost. She has a bye into the 100 in September’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

Richardson said on Instagram Monday that she had put herself in a “compromised situation,” and on Tuesday, she issued a written apology to Coleman on Instagram. “I love him & to him I can’t apologize enough,” she wrote. She wrote that her apology “should be just as loud” as her “actions,” adding: “To Christian I love you & I am so sorry.”

In her video, Richardson said she’s practicing “self-reflection” and refuses “to run away but face everything that comes to me head-on.”

If we’re serious about eradicating domestic violence, then we must take what she did seriously, too.

Richardson, unfortunately, is joining a long list of athletes who have been extremely talented in competition and frustratingly self-sabotaging when they’re not competing. She’s 25. She should be basking in everything, including lucrative endorsements, that world-class talent brings an athlete entering their prime. But Richardson has consistently asked her fans to look past her unforced errors. She missed the 2021 Tokyo Games after she was suspended for testing positive for marijuana use. Later, she hired as her coach Dennis Mitchella former sprinter who once received a ban from the sport’s international regulating body for doping. Now, she’s not only been seen engaging in domestic violence against a partner but suggesting to police that they arrest that partner — even though there’s no evidence he did anything wrong.

We’ve seen athletes implicated in domestic violence incidents before. And it’s important to be consistent and say that Richardson’s aggression is not OK because she’s a woman, because she’s smaller or because she pushed Coleman instead of striking him. If we’re serious about eradicating domestic violence and holding its perpetrators accountable, then we must take what she did seriously, too.

Each time she’s messed up before, Richardson’s fans and sponsors have ultimately embraced her and helped elevate her to new levels of popularity. But there’s no guarantee they’ll keep doing that. Richardson is decorated. She has silver and gold medals from the 2024 Olympics, gold and bronze from the 2023 world championships, and a slew of collegiate championships and records on her resume. And yet it seems clear that if she’d been more disciplined, she could be even more decorated.

She won’t yet be 30 when the 2028 Olympic Games roll around, and she should be the star of arguably the most popular Olympic sport when it returns to her home country. Rightfully, millions of fans are rooting for her and thousands of young athletes hope to someday embody her singular fusion of individuality and athleticism.

She’s promising to do the self-reflection and work to become the athlete we can all be proud of. Let’s hope she does.

Keith Reed

Keith Reed is an award-winning journalist and a past senior editor at ESPN. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Root, Vibe, Essence and elsewhere.