Sha’Carri Richardson, was suspended from the upcoming Tokyo Summer Olympics

You watch her swiftly speed through the 100 meters. You welcome her joy, her smile is huge, her personality fits, and she just happily goes through her interview with flying colors.

That’s young and bubbly 21-year-old Sha’Carri Richardson, who is usually the shortest in the field and the fastest, but she’s also the easiest one to describe. Her real hair is blond and regularly short, but on top of her head is the long, flowing bright orange, while her fingernails are extra large, and this brings instant recognition.

She’s been winning all her races, has the current fastest time in the world, and until a recent suspension, she was envisioning the Tokyo Summer Olympics where she thought she would win the century and anchor the United States’ 4 x 100 relay team.

Now she’s in a no-win situation. While testing positive in a usual drug report based on the use of marijuana, the USA’s Track & Field Rules Committee suspended her, not for just the individual race, but even though this suspension ends before the relays, she won’t be entered in that either.

And the price that Richardson will end up paying will turn out to be out-sized for doing for doing what millions of Americans do legally every day. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime, especially because her only crime is that she violated doping rules that have nothing to do with upholding the integrity of her sport.

That means no gold medals, no prime-time television appearances, and no endorsement contracts bringing in millions of dollars. Forget getting on the cover of a Wheaties box, Richardson won’t even get to the starting line in these games, and she will have three long years to wait before another Olympics comes along.

Her plight is as sad as it was preventable. No one comes out a winner, and an Olympics already shaping up to a joyless exercise held under a state of emergency in Japan will miss the flamboyance of an American who likes to stand out before, during, and after each race.

The first time she was informed about this, the 5-foot-2 Richardson out of Dallas, Tex., showed her remarkable grace through her years, appearing on NBC’s Today show, not to argue that she should be put on the team, but to explain that her biological mother’s recent death combined with the pressure of preparing for trials led her to use the drug on the eve of winning the 100 in the Olympic trials in Oregon last month.

Now had she had a glass of wine instead, she would be packing her bags for Tokyo. It’s an irony not lost on marijuana advocates, all though the saddened Richardson indicated she was already moving on.

“All these perfect people that know how to live life,” she said, “I’m glad I’m not one of them. adding in a later tweet, “2022-2025 undefeated.”

Clearly, she couldn’t have picked a worse time to smoke pot. The idea that she would jeopardize so much for so little is head-shaking at best, for no matter how anyone feels about marijuana, it still is on the banned list on the Olympic stage.

It’s a shame because she should have been a breakaway star in the Olympics desperate for any kind of positive jolt. She has the looks, she has the goods, and would have been a Yankee doodle dandy walking around Tokyo with a pair of gold medals draped around her neck.

Was it fair?

“Marijuana is considered to be a substance of abuse and not a performance-enhancing drug,” said a member of the USA board of directors, “and I think our goal is to test performance-enhancing in an effort to ensure there’s a level playing field.”

Said another athlete who did not qualify for these Olympics, “I think it stinks, and I don’t think there’s a better definition of it. I’ve know Sha’Carri for some times and she’s just a wonderful person, very patriotic, and yes, this isn’t fair.”

The reason given for leaving her off the relays was that it would be unfair to the runners who were already chosen based on their finishes in the Olympic trails, and right or wrong, those are the rules even though putting her on the relay team sounded like a logical compromise, rules are rules.

Worse, Richardson learned she was booted from the Olympics team even before the names were announced. In a recent TV interview, she was asked if she would be rooting for the Americans competing in Tokyo, and she smiled and quickly answered, “What do you think, of course I am.”