Melissa Jefferson-Wooden crowned an incredible season by running a world-leading 21.68 seconds to win the 200-meter world title and complete an iconic sprint double.
The 24-year-old American took down Jamaican Shericka Jackson, who had won the past two world titles in the distance, and finished third here in 22.18s.
Jefferson-Wooden is the first woman since Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in 2013 to win 100m and 200m gold at the same world championships, and the first American woman to claim the 200m title since Allyson Felix in 2009.
In fact, the 21.68s performance, a 0.16s improvement on Jefferson-Wooden’s personal best, takes her from 27th to eighth on the all-time list.
MELISSA JEFFERSON-WOODEN DOES THE DOUBLE!
She runs the fastest time in the WORLD this year to complete the 100m/200m sweep. #WorldAthleticsChamps pic.twitter.com/sxEnv6MpMe
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) September 19, 2025
She won by almost half a second ahead of Great Britain’s Amy Hunt (22.14s), who closed hard in the final 60m and joins Dina Asher-Smith — who took gold in 2019 — as British women with world championship medals.
“I haven’t stopped smiling,” Jefferson-Wooden told Olympics.com after the race. “I probably won’t stop smiling for the next 24 hours. I truly can’t overstate how much it means.”
Jefferson-Wooden did not have to race Olympic champion Julien Alfred, with the St. Lucian scratching after a hamstring injury sustained when she won bronze in the 100m final.
As it was, Alfred would have needed to better her lifetime best (21.71s) to beat the American, who split 11.04s at 100m, already nine-hundredths up on the rest of the field as they came off the bend.
This was after a false start too, with Bahamian athlete Anthonique Strachan anticipating the gun too soon in Lane 2, and the athletes got away at the second time of asking.
It means Jefferson-Wooden ends this year with 20 wins from 22 races, including a streak of 15 wins over all distances since the end of May, which includes 100m and 200m American titles and now the world set.
She is expected to be a key part of the 4x100m relay team this weekend, which rounds out the programme in Tokyo.
Jefferson-Wooden’s win was the final race of a busy Day 7 at the world championships. Earlier, fellow American Noah Lyles matched Usain Bolt by winning his fourth straight men’s 200-meter title, avenging his Olympic loss to Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo.
(Photo: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
