Noah Lyles always said he was a star. He told anyone who would listen, from coaches, to fellow athletes, to the population of the world via the high-rolling Netflix film Sprint. Well, now they really are going to have to believe him, as on a lovely soft powder blue night in Saint-Denis, Lyles produced one of the most startling Olympic sprint final finishes to claim the Paris 2024 men’s 100m gold medal.
Lyles, the US and world No 1, had been an extraordinary presence in the buildup to this race. He is almost overwhelmingly charming in the flesh, all superstar sheen and utterly disarming honesty about his own flaws, his own superhero strengths, always on, always capturing the main stage. By the time he reached the start line in Paris for the men’s final – along with the women’s race, the keynote of this entire two-week circus – there was a sense of a man right on the edge. But of what exactly?
In the event it required an extraordinary act of will mid-race to seize the moment. With 50 metres run in Paris Lyles was in seventh place. The day was starting to stretch and fray at the edges, to take on a different shape in those strangely still mid-race seconds.
Lyles might have begun to tighten and lose his forward thrust. Instead, he produced an astonishing slingshot finish, surging through the field to take the race by five thousandths of a second. So the Olympic Games, always so hungry for product, light, heat, has a new star.
Lyles is 27. This is his Games, his moment in the crosshairs, the perfect star, and the perfect stage. In the moments before the race the Stade de France had been drenched in a spectacular light show. A middle aged man in sunglasses had appeared on the big screen to do some DJ-ing, as though only this could possibly increase the glamour, the electricity of the moment.
The real challenge to Lyles in Paris was Kishane Thompson from Jamaica, a wonderful emerging talent. Thompson is so new to this level he doesn’t even have a proper biography on the International Olympic Committee website (it basically says, Gender: male. Function: athlete).
But he had looked awesome in the semi-finals, running as though the air was frankly a little too thin for his liking. On Sunday night he came out and roared like a lion. Lyles did something wild, running off down the track, bouncing and whirling, grabbing great handfuls of air. Hmm. Was that a good idea? Was it actually worth doing anything else at this stage?
It is no secret that there are wider pressures in play here. Seb Coe and World Athletics always had a plan for these Olympic Games. The entire staging is in effect a product relaunch for track and field as a whole.
The epic years of the cold war opposition are long gone, that period where the sprint records were held up as a kind of barometer of human progress, like the arms race or the moon landings. Usain Bolt’s brilliance kept the circus afloat. But really this spectacle has become second tier since Rio 2016.
It shouldn’t be like this. Sprinting is a perfect spectator sport, so simple, so accessible. This is primal stuff. The humans are running. The humans are running fast. Who is the fastest human? But on a scale of talent v fame the world’s greatest sprinters are also among the world’s least recognisable elite athletes.
The answer is to create stars. And World Athletics has invested. Only this week Coe could be heard talking in Paris about Sprint, of which he is an executive producer, boasting of its status as the sixth most viewed entity on the platform. It’s a nice piece of work, but it is also framed to transform its two most marketable properties, Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson into global stars, a twin pronged assault linked to these Games.
Unfortunately, life is what tends to happen while you’re making plans. There was an indelible glory to Julien Alfred’s gold in the women’s 100m on Saturday night, a first ever medal for St Lucia. But it also contained a note of mischief. The best part of sport is that it just won’t follow the script.
So we came to Lyles and the men’s race. The sky above the lip of the roof was still pink as the athletes knelt at their blocks. Sprinters come in different genres. Most follow the angry avenger template, always chasing something. Then we have the prey, the sprinter who seems instead to be fleeing. Britain’s newest star Louie Hinchliffe runs like he’s being chased by a swarm of bees.
Thompson is a classic floater, the sprinter who will kill you with grace. That ease of movement is in at own way an act of aggression, telling you always about strength in reserve. Lyles is a hybrid. He moves with wonderful grace, has astonishing efficiency once he gets past his drive phase, up into full flow.
His weakness is his start, which was terrible again. Thomson eased away, eating up the air in front of him, his own moment approaching. At which point, something strange happened, the entire field seeming to tense up, to go backwards while moving at preternatural speed. Only Lyles didn’t. He has been talking about this for so long, sketching out his legend in plain sight. It took 30 paces to make it real. From here the future seems wide open.
