With the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) set to honour sprint legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in the coming months, President Christopher Samuda says her impressive athletic and social efforts have made a significant impact both locally and globally.

Fraser-Pryce ended her illustrious 18-year senior career eight days ago at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo as she helped Jamaica’s women to silver in the 4x100m relay.

The 38-year-old, who made the 100m final for a record eighth time, retires as one of the most decorated sprinters in history with eight Olympic medals, including two gold in the 100m in 2008 and 2012, and 17 World Championships medals which includes her five titles in the 100m.

While not confirming the specifics, Samuda says Fraser-Pryce is more than deserving of any gesture the JOA will bestow.

“As a member of the Olympic household, we will honour her impact, we’ll honour her as a person, honour her as a mother and we’ll honour her as an Olympian,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“This is something that we will be doing and the details of which we will, of course, indicate in due course but certainly we are going to be honouring her as a member of the household, as a daughter of the soil and, more importantly, as an inspired human being that not only has an impact in Jamaica and regionally but as we have seen and as she has demonstrated, she has a global impact.”

Since her first Olympic title in 2008, Fraser-Pryce dominated on the world stage but also gave back through various philanthropic initiatives including her Pocket Rocket Foundation which has provided hundreds of scholarships to student athletes and supported to Waterhouse, the community she grew up in.

Samuda says her legacy will endure because of her outstanding contributions both on the track and in her work off it.

“Her human qualities, her admirable personality that not only interfaces with persons who are stakeholders in the sporting industry but how she interfaces with the ordinary person in Jamaica and how she has been able to impact the thought leadership in this country in sport and that is perhaps a great legacy of hers,” he said.

“Her ability to have and continue to have an impact on the thought leadership in sport which of course is very critical to the development of sport because before you can have meaningful and impactful action, the thought process has to be there. So Shelly’s impact is just not simply a career that has spanned many years that has been admirable – her impact is human on the human landscape of sport and how she has inspired the youth in sport to not only emulate but go beyond what she has done as she has repeatedly said and this is something that the Jamaica Olympic Association celebrates which is going beyond the podium, becoming a standard bearer and having that enduring impact on thought and action.”

Fraser-Pryce, who returned to the island on Monday, has received various local honours, including Order of Jamaica, a statue at the National Stadium and the renaming of Ashoka Road in Waterhouse, where she grew up.

Silver medallist in the women’s 4x100m relay event Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce poses for portraits during a studio photo session on the sidelines of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on September 21, 2025. (Photo: AFP)

Jamaica Olympic Association President Christopher Samuda.

Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce competes in the women’s 100m semi-final during the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, on Sunday, September 14, 2025. (Photo: AFP)