Noah Lyles wins historically close Olympic 100-meter sprint by five thousandths of a second

Noah Lyles paced the end of the floor, hands clasped above his head, looking wistfully at the scoreboard that, sooner or later, would show him the answer he had been searching for for three sweaty years.

All that hard work after the last Olympics, all the work on the track and in the weight room to find a centimeter here or a millisecond there, would it really have been worth it?

Ten seconds passed, then twenty. Then almost thirty. And then the answer appeared.

Yes, Lyles is the 100m champion at the Paris Olympics. The fastest man in the world.

But not by much.

The American showman beat Jamaican Kishane Thompson by five thousandths of a second, or 0.005 of a tick on the clock, on Sunday in a race that will remain forever etched in the memory.

The final score is: Lyles 9.784 seconds, Thompson 9.789.

The new champion said that before leaving for Paris, one of his physiotherapists had assured him that the race would be a success.

“He said, ‘This is how close the first and second are going to be,’” Lyles said as he pinched his thumb and forefinger together, almost touching. “I can’t believe how right he was.”

To give you an idea, an eyelash blink lasts an average of 0.1 seconds. That’s 20 times longer than the gap between the first and the second.

It was so close that when the sprinters crossed the finish line and the word “Photo” appeared next to the names of Lyles, Thompson and five others in the eight-man field, Lyles walked up to the Jamaican and said, “I think you won the Olympics.”

Thompson, who was running three lanes to the left of Lyles and had no idea where he was on the track, wasn’t convinced.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I’m not even sure, because it was so close,’” the Jamaican said.

Time will tell. It always does. When Lyles’ name was called first, he tore his tag from his bib and held it up to the sky. Moments later, he shouted into the camera, “America, I told you I could do it!”

The top four competitors were separated by less than 0.03. The top seven finishers all finished within 0.09 of each other.

American Fred Kerley finished third with a time of 9.81. “It was probably one of the best races I’ve ever done,” he said.

In the photo finish, Kerley’s orange shoe crossed the line before anyone else, or anything. But it’s the chest that breaks the barrier that counts. Lyles’ chest crossed first.

It was the closest double placing in the 100 metres since at least Moscow in 1980, or perhaps ever.

At the time, Britain’s Allan Wells narrowly beat Silvio Leonard in an era when electronic stopwatches did not measure thousandths of a second. The same happened in 1932, when Eddie Tolan won the first photo finish at the Olympics.

Lyles admitted that during the agonizing wait, he was pretty sure he had sagged his chest a tad too early. Sagging, it turns out, is one of the few things he doesn’t work on over and over again at his Florida training rink.

“But I would say I have a fair amount of experience with diving,” he said, recalling competitions he won in high school and as a junior.

The time of 9.784 marked a new personal best for Lyles and made him the first American champion in the Olympic highlight race since Justin Gatlin in 2004.

Lyles hopes to go one step further and perhaps bring the sport back to the days when Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses lit up the track – an unmissable event, like the one Lyles performed in front of an estimated 80,000 people on a warm evening at the Stade de France.

The mission began after Lyles settled for a bronze medal in Tokyo in his favorite, and then only, sprint, the 200. Those COVID-impacted Games were a terrible experience for Lyles. He rededicated himself to improving his mental health, but he also sought a new mission: the 100 meters, and with it, a chance at immortality on the track.

The training was tough for a sprinter never known as a great starter, but he persevered. When he won the world championships last year, and then backed up his victory in the 200, his goal for Paris was very close.

But when he got to the Olympic final, after finishing second in both qualifying races and facing a sprinter who had run faster than him this year (Thompson) and another who had beaten him twice this year (Jamaican Oblique Seville), he knew this was no coronation.

Thompson added another obstacle when, during the introduction, he let out a primal scream, the kind that Lyles has unleashed in some of his biggest races.

“I thought, ‘Man, this is my stuff, this is crazy,’” Lyles said.

Lyles galloped and jumped about 20 yards down the track before returning to the starting line, where runners waited about three minutes before the starting signal finally sounded.

It was worth the wait.

Now, the question that could be debated for years is: what was the difference in this case?

Could it have been Lyles’s speed of approach and that inclination towards the line that, in his opinion, had been miscalculated?

Was it his ability to stay within reach of everyone in this line of sprinters for the first 60 meters, a skill he had been working on with tedious workout after workout since he had first tackled the shorter sprint?

The answer: all this and much more.

“Everyone on the field came out knowing they could win this game,” Lyles said.

It took 9.784 seconds, and then another 30 seconds or so, before the name of the man who had actually acted appeared on the scoreboard.

“When I saw that name, I thought, ‘Oh my God, there it is!’” Lyles said.

Gold (and bronze) for Ukrainian high jumpers
Yaroslava Mahuchikh won Olympic high jump gold for her war-torn country, Ukraine, and as a bonus, she had company. Her teammate Iryna Gerashchenko won bronze, and her teammates leaped, skipped and bounded across the track, waving their blue and yellow flags in heartfelt celebration.

Mahuchikh took fewer attempts than Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers to clear the winning height of 2 meters, adding the sport’s highest prize, Olympic gold, to her world championship and world record.

Kerr vs. Ingebrigtsen is a matchup for the men’s 1,500 on fire
Track and field’s most compelling rivalry will culminate on Tuesday, when reigning world champion Josh Kerr of Great Britain takes on reigning Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway.

They also faced off in Sunday’s semi-final, with Ingebrigtsen getting the better of the Briton, looking twice as they hurtled down the home straight, to win a race that looked to matter more than it should in 3:32.38.

“They should expect one of the fiercest, toughest 1500s the sport has seen in a long time,” Kerr said.

Did Ingebrigtsen agree?

“It depends on who you ask, maybe,” he said. “I mean, racing is whatever you want it to be.”

[Associated Press]

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