Saint Lucia's Julien Alfred celebrates after winning the women's 100m at the Zurich Diamond League

Zurich (AFP) - Olympic champion Julien Alfred gained a degree of revenge on world gold medallist Melissa Jefferson-Wooden with a scorching victory in the women’s 100m at the Zurich Diamond League meet on Thursday.

In the Silesia Diamond League meet on Sunday, Jefferson-Wooden had come out on top in the sprint pair’s first head-to-head over 100m since last year’s Tokyo world championships.

This time around, Alfred had an electric start and fired down the track in front of a capacity 25,000-strong crowd at the Swiss city’s Letzigrund Stadium.

The St Lucian clocked a national record of 10.70 seconds, beating American Jefferson-Wooden by just five-thousandths of a second with a savage dip at the line.

A second American, Sha’Carri Richardson, the 2023 world champion, rounded out the podium with 10.97sec ahead of Jamaica’s Tina Clayton.

“Running this fast is never easy, especially because getting out the blocks is always a challenge for me – I could be sleeping in that box all year!” said Alfred.

“But I trust what I can do and what I can’t do. Staying at the top is definitely a harder job than making it up there.

“Going up the mountain, you are still hungry, you want more. It is not much fun when you’re not the one being hunted.”

Alfred added: “When I became Olympic champion, it was a completely different state – mentally and emotionally.

“In the times that people have high expectations of what I should be doing, I have to turn to my team: my coach, my agent and my family in particular.”

Jefferson-Wooden was left happy to register a season’s best despite the narrowest of defeats.

“I do not like losing, but you know, it is the name of the game. Obviously, anytime we step to the line, it is going to be a good race. And today, it came down to the wire,” she said.

“So I am looking forward to seeing her again in two weeks” at the inaugural season-ending World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest.

“I want to see what I can put out there. But we are still in a really good spot to do some really amazing things. In the end, you cannot be bad with a season’s best at all.”

Newly-crowned European champion Amy Hunt finished fifth in 11.04sec.