In 9.79 seconds, it is all over.
Noah Lyles is the Olympic 100m champion.
The marquee event of the Olympic Games couldn’t have been any closer. Lyles needed to record a new personal best and even then it nearly wasn’t enough. He got off to a horror start – the slowest of the blocks in the eight-man final. A hundred meters of desperation later, he finished 5/1000 of a second in front of Kishane Thompson of Jamaica.
9.784 to 9.789.
Tickets to watch Sunday’s evening session of the athletics competition at the Stade de France cost an eye-popping €980. If you were paying that kind of money, chances are you weren’t doing it solely for the pleasure of watching the women’s high jump, the men’s hammer throw or the semifinals of the men’s 1500m.
Running is perhaps the most basic athletic trait of man and the one that matters the most. Sure there are other running events but none are as raw as the 100m. It is the antithesis of complication. Eight men, their legs, and a straightforward test to see who can reach the end of a track in the fastest time. Who grew up wanting to be the world’s best hammer thrower? Ethan Katzberg probably —but not many others.
Yet, who didn’t have dreams of being the fastest man in the world?
Exactly.
Noah Lyles (extreme left) of USA won the men’s 100m run in Paris Olympics. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR/The Hindu
And while most of us might have dreamt of it, only Noah Lyles gets to say he is. At least in the Olympic final. In his semifinal heat, he was beaten to the finish by Jamaica’s Oblique Seville – adding more drama to an event that’s not short of it.
It’s unlikely if this is exactly what he had planned, but Lyles who’s part of a Netflix series Sprint – that he hopes will do for track and field what Drive to Survive did for Formula 1 – is not particularly averse to drama. He’s not short of hyperbole and self-promotion. At a press conference before the Games, Lyles declared himself the fastest man alive. “ It’s me. It’s always going to be me.”
For all his bluster, the fact is that until he came to Paris, the 27-year-old didn’t have the hardware to back himself up. He only had a bronze in the 200m at Tokyo. He might have three gold medals — in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m — at the World Championships last year but he’s not the fastest this year – that is still Kishane Thompson.
A surprise loss to the Jamaican Seville in the semifinals, the fact that he was even slower than Thompson, and the stage was set not for a crowning but a very public comeuppance. All his talk of being a star, of revolutionizing the sport had to start with a gold on the biggest stage on earth and that didn’t seem like a guarantee. All the lights and cameras had to be followed by action.
Having talked the talk, Sunday at 9:50 PM in Paris, was his time to walk the walk – or at least sprint the sprint.
To Lyles’ credit, he didn’t betray any nerves as he took his place in the lineup in lane seven, just to the right of Seville. The man who had said he had the ‘mindset of a god’, now just mouthed the words ‘thank you god’. To his right, Seville made finger guns and mock-fired down the track.
The drama was at a fever pitch by this point. The crowd that had been buzzing and anxious and making Mexican waves all evening became deathly quiet and the runners took their stances. There’s really nothing like an Olympic sprint final – the looming, intimidating knowledge that it’s over as suddenly as it starts, people working four years for under 10 seconds of performance.
In the next ten seconds, the stadium commentators squealed out as much as they could. The stadium itself was lit by tens of thousands of flashes as the finalists raced to the finish line. Lyles, dead last at first, pulled himself into contention before stretching his torso right at the finish line. For a few more seconds everyone looked on in disbelief at the giant screen, which showed a column of photo finishes, before declaring Lyles the winner.
Noah Lyles of USA celebrates after winning the men’s 100m. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR/The Hindu
He runs all the way around the ground, then onto the grass. It’s less a lap of honour and more a release of emotion. The stadium celebrates with him. All eyes are on him as he asserts his right to take centre stage.
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