Noah Lyles gives U.S. sprinting its swag back with Olympic gold in the 100 meters
Andscape at the Olympics is an ongoing series exploring the Black athletes and culture around the 2024 Paris Games.
SAINT-DENIS, France — It’s probably time to stop the handwringing about the state of sprinting in the United States.
On Sunday, three U.S. sprinters reached the finals of the 100 meters. In one of the closest finals in Olympic history, the leader of the pack—Noah Lyles—pulled out a victory with nothing left to spare.
It took a near-perfect race and a dip at the end, but the 27-year-old Lyles edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson with a personal best time of 9.784 seconds. Thompson also ran a 9.79, but Lyles finished 0.005 of a second faster. Lyles’s teammate, Fred Kerley, won the bronze.
The race was so close that Lyles, in real time, said he thought Thompson had won. “We were waiting for the names to pop up, and I’ll be honest, I came over and I was like, ‘I think you got the Olympics, dog,’ ” Lyles said.
Thompson, running in his first Olympics, remembered Lyles coming over after the race but had no idea of what had just happened.
“When we both crossed the line, as he said, he came to me and said, ‘Hey man, I think you got it,’ ” Thompson recalled. “I was like, ‘Wow, I’m not even sure,’ because it was that close.”
Lyles was flying blind in the race. Thompson was in Lane 4 and Lyles, who was in Lane 7, couldn’t see how strong a race Thompson was running. Fortunately for Lyles, he listened to an inner voice that spoke just as he approached the tape. “Something said I need to lean, and I was like, ‘I’m going to lean,’ because it was that kind of race,” he said.
That turned out to be a gold-medal lean.
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Of course, this is what the Olympics are about. An athlete trains for years to be able to compete at the moment of truth. We saw Simone Biles do it in gymnastics and Katie Ledecky do it in swimming. On Sunday, the world saw Lyles do it on the track.
The great thing about Sunday’s race is that Lyles was the loudest voice in the room—boisterous, talking trash and taking names. And at his moment of truth, he delivered.
“I mean, it feels good to back it up,” he said. “I’ve seen tons of scenarios where athletes come in as a favorite and it doesn’t work out for them. Knowing that that could happen continues to fuel me, and that’s just constantly going that extra step, knowing that at any time, somebody could pop up.”
At the beginning of the season, many track experts said 2024 would be a slow year for sprinting.
“Well, it wasn’t no slow year in the hundred,” Lyles said.
This was a great race, a dramatic victory and an invigorating moment for U.S. track and field. Ever since the 100 meters became the cornerstone of the Olympic competition, the United States has been a dominant force. Not including Sunday’s result, the United States has won 16 of the 29 men’s gold medals and nine of the 22 women’s gold medals in Olympic history. But there has been a significant drought.
What has hung over the heads of not just Lyles but the entire U.S. sprinting community is the idea that American sprinters, once a feared commodity on the international stage, had lost their swagger. No one feared U.S. sprinters as they had, even going back to yesteryear names like Charley Paddock, Eddie Tolan, Jesse Owens and Wilma Rudolph.
Because of “Bullet” Bob Hayes at the 1964 Tokyo Games, critics coined the phrase “World’s Fastest Human” and conferred the title on the winner of the 100 meters. Carl Lewis won back-to-back Olympic 100-meter titles in 1984 and 1988, and then Maurice Green—a relative unknown—showed what a deep bench of sprinters the United States had when he won the gold at the Sydney Games in 2000.
Who would have guessed that when Justin Gatlin won the 100 meters in 2004, his victory would be the United States’ last Olympic gold medal in the event until Sunday night when Lyles was pushed to run the race of a lifetime.
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Critics mistakenly conflate the United States’ Olympic gold-medal drought with poor training. The reality is that sprinting continues to be vibrant in the United States. It’s just that many of the sprinters are coming from out of the country.
The United States’ coaching system continues to attract and train many of the world’s greatest sprinters. The fact that athletes can earn a college scholarship makes the system attractive to international athletes.
Julien Alfred, who became Saint Lucia’s first-ever Olympic champion on Saturday when she upset Sha’Carri Richardson to win the women’s 100 meters, ran collegiately for the University of Texas. While Lyles opted to turn professional out of high school, Kerley attended a community college. They are part of the resurgence.
On Sunday, Lyles said he wanted his gold-medal performance to keep the attention on U.S. sprinters. He pointed to the enthusiastically received Netflix series Sprint as an example.
“I want to see a continuation of the ability to take advantage of moments for our sport,” he said. “What we need to do as a sport is take advantage and say ‘Hey, we need to make this as available as possible for people to come and watch. This needs to be accessible because this is a world sport, and we need to be able to show it to the world.’ ”
Before the media session ended, a reporter asked Lyles what he hoped to get out of his Olympic performances individually, which could yield at least two more gold medals. He will run in the 200 meters and the 4×100 relay this week.
“I want my own shoe,” he said without hesitation. Lyles pointed out that the great Michael Johnson never had his own shoe. “I want my own trainer. I want a sneaker; there ain’t no money in spikes.
“I feel like for how many medals we bring back, the notoriety we get, the fact that that hasn’t happened is crazy to me.’’
Lyles won a dramatic race on Sunday and bestowed the U.S. sprinting community with a great gift: he gave it back its swag.