Noah Lyles, Olympic 100m champion by 5 thousandths | Paris 2024 Olympic Games | EUROtoday

A minute later, Noah Lyles is given the very best honour that may be aspired to within the Stade de France, which has grow to be a discotheque of lights and screams: he grabs the chain and rings the bell that solely champions can ring. He does it like a crazed, uncontrolled youngster. He has simply gained the 100m ultimate, the objective of his life. He has performed it with a race like all his races, a foul begin and development. He wins like nobody has ever gained an Olympic 100m gold medal earlier than, with an impressive time, 9.79s, the perfect of his life, by a really small margin, 5 thousandths of a second, a distinction with the second, the annoyed Jamaican Kishane Thompson, that solely the picture end might discover. Exactly 9.784s by 9.789s. A sigh, the ultimate exhalation. The energy of Olympic pace returns to the United States 20 years after Justin Gatlin gained in Athens after a sirtaki session and earlier than testing optimistic for doping.

Third was Fred Kerley, the discreet and critical American, god of focus and errors together with his sponsors' sneakers (9.81s). The Italian Marcell Jacobs, Olympic champion in Tokyo, made his finest time of a yr through which he started coaching within the United States, 9.85s, which solely earned him fifth place. In Tokyo he gained with 9.80s.

Lyles gained. Not everybody needed it. No one anticipated it. Maybe not even him.

“Waiting for the photo finish was a crazy moment. I thought Kishane had it. I was like, ‘I’m going to have to swallow my pride,’ which I have no problem doing,” he says afterwards, on the press convention. “We all went out there knowing we could win. That’s the mindset we have to have. Iron sharpens iron. I saw my name and thought, ‘I didn’t do it against slow opponents, I did it against the best of the best, on the biggest stage and with the biggest pressure. ’ I wasn’t even in the 100m in 2021. This is my first Olympic Games in the 100m. And I have the title, not just at the world championships, but at the Games, of the fastest man in the world.”

In entrance of the tacos, within the final seconds of an infinite presentation, and music from mindfulness In the stadium to calm the hearts earlier than his explosion, Noah Lyles, leaning on lane seven, can look to his left, at those that have promised to be the executioners of his Olympic dream. They are two Jamaicans. They aspire to the throne of pace, to victory within the 100m, the one race that provides the qualification of quickest man on the earth to the Olympic title. They aspire to inherit Usain Bolt, the colossal dominator of the earlier decade and of historical past. They are Asafa Powell compacted right into a colossus with the shoulders of a dockworker, quadriceps and glutes like a velodrome deal with, muscle groups and dynamite known as Kishane Thompson and an Usain Bolt hunched right into a 1.70m pace bomb known as Oblique Seville. Jamaica needs to regain the ability of pace. In Kingston, his coaches, additionally the coaches of his older brothers, Stephen Francis and Glen Mills, embrace their beer bellies and pace savants, and Snoop Dogg, Lyles' primary fan, rehearses rhymes within the entrance row of the stadium.

The odds are towards the American who trains in Orlando with Lance Bauman, the person who made Tyson Gay world champion in 2007 earlier than the arrival of Bolt who modified pace ceaselessly. In the heats, he began badly and had no capability to react, elevated pace within the center and ultimate section and was overwhelmed by a tough scholar of Carl Lewis, the British Louie Hinchcliffe. In the semi-finals, the identical factor occurred. Oblique Seville (9.81s) overtook him at the beginning and had no transition to catch him, regardless of reaching his finest time of the yr, 9.83s. Two hours later, within the ultimate, Lyles was first and Seville was final (9.91s). For the primary time in an Olympic ultimate with authorized wind (1m/s in favor) all eight athletes went below 10s.

Everyone was rooting for Thompson, who not solely began with the perfect world time of the yr (9.77s) however was additionally in a position to begin with energy and keep forward by growing his pace. He did it within the heats, relaxed, he did it within the semi-final, extra tense, the quickest of all, 9.80s. He even improved it within the ultimate, when Lyles made an sudden comeback. According to the evaluation of the organisation, all the time approximated by the way in which they take the occasions, at 30m the Jamaican was already in first place (3.84s), whereas Lyles was final, six hundredths behind, virtually a metre. This state of affairs continued till 50m, when Lyles, his development maintained, was already third (5.61s) 5 hundredths behind Thompson, who maintained his pace. They handed the 60m in 6.41s and 6.44s, respectively. Lyles was second after simply 90 metres, a hundredth of a second behind the Jamaican who had already reached his restrict. And it was solely within the final step, the final breaststroke, that Lyles got here ahead, his springy step, he would leap, with large development, benefiting from all of the bounce of the lavender monitor and his carbon soles. I couldn't see him, however he was watching me, looking me down,” says Thompson, a good loser, who remembers that, although the silver medal is a disappointment, at least he has finished without injuries, which has always been his weak point. And he reveals the quick conversation he had with Lyles waiting for the result of the photo. “He mentioned to me, 'Hey, Kishane, I assumed you had performed it,' and I replied: 'I'm not so certain.'”

Lyles' victory is the victory of an athlete with a vision of the past and the future. A man capable of feeling at home on the catwalk of fashion with models that only PSG footballers or the unfortunate Koundé dare to wear, and also as a children's hero. Capable of winning the trials of the United States showing off different Yu-Gi-Oh! cards at the beginning of each series, or of getting excited when his mother, to whom he is so attached, tells him that she has met Elmo, his favorite character from Sesame Street, on the streets of Paris, and shows him the selfie she took with him. Athletics is a show, it has to be a show, we have to be stars, is Lyles' usual proclamation. And the purists call him a braggart. They say he is false, artificial. They tell him that what was natural charisma in Bolt is posturing in him. But he swallows it, holds on and wins.

“I want my own shoe. I want my own clothing. I’m very serious about that,” Lyles, who is sponsored by Adidas, said. “Very serious. I want a shoe. There’s no money in spikes. There’s money in sports. Even Michael Johnson didn’t have his own shoe. For the number of medals we brought in, the notoriety, the fact that he didn’t have any seems crazy to me. I want to continue to build on the great moments for our sport.”

He can already shout it: he is the fastest. The 200m, his favourite race, and the 4 x 100m relay await him, and he even wants to run the 4x400m, and win four medals in the same Games, as only the legends he wants to be, Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, have managed before.

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