Global sports brand PUMA has signed five-time Olympic Champion and fastest woman alive, Elaine Thompson-Herah. The 30-year-old Jamaican will further boost the company’s impressive roster of track and field athletes at the 2022 World Athletics Championships, currently underway in Eugene, Oregon, in the USA.
Last year Thompson-Herah became the first woman in history to win the “sprint double” at consecutive Olympics, having taken gold in both the 100-metre and 200-metre sprints at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and then doing it again at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Apart from her historic Olympic achievements, Thompson-Herah became the fastest woman alive when she ran 10.54 seconds at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene in 2021. That is the closest any woman has yet come to beating the long-standing (but disputed) World Record 10.49 Set by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988.
“We are thrilled that Elaine has chosen to join the PUMA family,” says PUMA CEO Bjørn Gulden. “With her speed, she embodies everything we stand for as a brand. Elaine ran the second-fastest time in women’s history last year and is only 0.05 seconds off a World Record. She is really targeting that World Record, and we want to help her achieve that goal with our most innovative performance products.”
PUMA has a long and rich history in track & field, and has sponsored the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association since 2002. Thompson-Herah now joins her Jamaican compatriot, sprint superhero, World Record-holder and multiple Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt as part of the PUMA family. “PUMA just felt like the right fit, a company that has been working with the World’s Fastest Man for decades,” says Thompson-Herah. “I’m excited to be part of such an elite group, and I really want to break the 100-metre World Record. The current one has been undefeated for 34 years. Now is the time. I think there’s still a lot I can unleash.”
Ed’s Note: At the time of writing, Elaine Thompson-Herah had finished third in the women’s 100m final at the 2022 World Champs, the third-placed Jamaican in another cleansweep of the sprint podium by her country on the world stage. She had also cruised through the first round of qualifying heats in the women’s 200m event, with the semi-final round scheduled during the evening session on Tuesday 19 July and the final on the evening of Thursday 21 July.
More About PUMA
PUMA is one of the world’s leading sports brands, designing, developing, selling and marketing footwear, apparel and accessories. For more than 70 years, PUMA has relentlessly pushed sport and culture forward by creating fast products for the world’s fastest athletes. PUMA offers performance and sport-inspired lifestyle products in categories such as Football, Running and Training, Basketball, Golf, and Motorsports. It collaborates with renowned designers and brands to bring sport influences into street culture and fashion. The PUMA Group owns the brands PUMA, Cobra Golf and stichd. The company distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs about 16,000 people worldwide, and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany.