This is an opinion column.

10.65 seconds. You can live a lifetime in that span. A whole life. In 10.65 seconds

100 meters. The shortest championship distance on track & field’s world stage proved to be all Sha’Carri Richardson needed for the comeback of a lifetime—a comeback that was surely not certain.

She ran that distance in 10.65 seconds at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest on Monday. Ran it faster than any woman had ever run on that stage.

She ran it from the outside. Literally—from lane nine, the farthest lane to the right. A purgatory lane, reserved typically for the slowpoke of the bunch. For irrelevant runners with little, mostly no chance to finish first.

For runners who matter little to the favorites, to the burners bunched in the middle lanes. Bunched so they can see each other. So, they can feel each other.

Richardson was on the outside as what the sport calls a fast loser—runners with the fastest times who failed to finish high enough in the semifinal heat to qualify for the final. In the semis, she was a statue out of the start and pushed to finish in third (the top two finishers qualify for the finals) in a time (10.84) fast enough to scrape into the final.

She was on the outside—figuratively, too. Because she wasn’t supposed to be there. Not after all the stuff. After being banned from the Tokyo Olympics for testing positive for cannabis. After failing to qualify for the worlds last year in either the 100 or 200 (her other signature event). After the sport’s iconic sprinter, Usain Bolt suggested on social media that she should “talk less and train more.”

Outside.

Oh, she had fans, including 2.4 million IG followers. She had cheerleaders, had people rooting for her as loudly as those who doubted her. Rooting for her because there is a bit of Sha-Carrie Richardson in all of us. A bit of defiance. A bit of bravado. A bit of orange hair.

Though she possessed not a bit, but an abundance of it all. Too much for some. Too Flo with no Jo.

Outside.

Right where she was supposed to be. Where she needed to be, to live a lifetime in 10.65 seconds.

She seemed out of the running in the first 50 meters, but steadied and surged alongside Shericka Jackson of Jamaica, the then reigning fastest woman in the world—though Jackson most likely did not see Richardson. She certainly did not feel her.

Indeed, to some eyes, she might have slightly down-throttled a tad too soon because she had a comfortable lead over fellow Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in the lane next to her on the right.

Jackson leaned forward at the finish—sprinter’s instinct, though, not with desperation. As if she did not see the blurred figure of defiance stretching two long, final strides across the finish.

The blur of a life run in 10.65 seconds. On the outside. Right where she was supposed to be.

Right where track legend Edwin Moses believes she needed to be. “Lane nine was a blessing,” he told me Monday. “[Richardson] was invisible.”

“I was by myself in my own world,” is how the sprinter described it, “which honestly has been like that all my life.”

Richardson is still defiant, though a tad less so.

She is still bravado personified, though a tad less so.

And she’s certainly still hair, though a tad less so, now with orange and red more of an accent at the end of the ponytail braid that extends far down her back.

She’s still outside—like that all my life. On the track, though, she’s back in the fast lane. Back on the inside lane.

Back on track to greatness.

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I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Check out my new podcast series “Panther: Blueprint for Black Power,” which I co-host with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj