In Saint-Denis, France, Noah Lyles paced anxiously at the far end of the track, hands folded over his head. He gazed at the scoreboard, waiting for an answer that had eluded him through three years of relentless effort since the last Olympics. Was all the grueling training—the countless hours on the practice track and in the weight room—worth it?
Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. Nearly thirty seconds later, the answer flashed before him.
Yes, Lyles had clinched the title of 100-meter champion at the Paris Olympics. He was now the World’s Fastest Man. But it was by the slimmest of margins.
The American sprinter edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by a mere five-thousandths of a second—precisely .005 seconds—in what will be remembered as a heart-stopping race.
The final times read: Lyles at 9.784 seconds, Thompson at 9.789.
Before leaving for Paris, Lyles’s physio had predicted a nail-biting finish. “He said, ‘This is how close first and second are going to be,’” Lyles shared, pinching his thumb and forefinger together to demonstrate. “I can’t believe how right he was.”
To put it in perspective, the blink of an eye takes about .1 seconds—20 times longer than the gap between first and second place.
As the sprinters crossed the finish line and saw “Photo” pop up next to the names of Lyles, Thompson, and five others in the eight-man field, the tension was palpable. Lyles approached Thompson and said, “I think you got the Olympics, dog.”
Thompson, who had raced three lanes over from Lyles and was uncertain of his position, responded, “I was, ‘Wow, I’m not even sure because it was that close.’”
Time would soon tell. When Lyles’s name appeared first on the scoreboard, he ripped his name tag from his bib and held it high. Looking into the television camera, he exuberantly declared, “America, I told you I got this!”
The distance between the first four racers was less than .03 seconds. The top seven finished within .09 seconds of each other.
America’s Fred Kerley finished third with a time of 9.81 seconds. “That’s probably one of the most beautiful races I’ve been in,” he remarked.
In the photo finish, Kerley’s orange shoe crossed the line first, but it was Lyles’s chest that officially broke the barrier.
This marked the closest 1-2 finish in the 100-meter sprint since at least 1980 in Moscow—if not ever. Back then, Britain’s Allan Wells narrowly defeated Silvio Leonard, in an era when electronic timers did not measure down to the thousandths of a second. Similarly, Eddie Tolan won the first photo finish in the 1932 Olympics.
During that excruciating wait, Lyles was convinced he might have dipped his chest a bit too soon. “But I would say I have a decent history with dipping,” he reflected, citing victories in high school and as a junior.
His time of 9.784 seconds was a new personal best and made him the first American champion in the marquee race since Justin Gatlin in 2004. Lyles aims to elevate the sport to the days when Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses made track a must-watch event. This vision began after taking home a bronze in Tokyo, in his favored 200-meter event. The COVID-impacted Games left him seeking redemption and a new mission: the 100 meters and a shot at track immortality.
Despite being known primarily as a distance sprinter, Lyles adapted his training to improve his start. Winning the world championships last year and subsequently the 200 meters positioned him to achieve his Paris objective.
Even heading into the Olympic final, having placed second in both qualifying races and facing a field that included faster competitors like Thompson and two-time winner this year, Jamaica’s Oblique Seville, Lyles knew this would not be an easy victory. Thompson, setting an additional obstacle, let out a primal scream during the introductions—a tactic Lyles himself often employs.
Lyles performed a celebratory gallop and leap before settling at the starting line, where the runners waited three long minutes for the gun.
The question that will be debated for years remains: What made the difference in this race? Was it Lyles’s closing speed or the precisely timed lean he thought he had mistimed? Perhaps it was his skill in keeping pace with the leading sprinters over the first 60 meters, a talent honed through rigorous practice.
The answer was the culmination of all these factors.
“Everyone in the field came out knowing they could win this race,” Lyles reflected.
It took 9.784 seconds and an excruciating wait for the scoreboard to reveal the man who did.
“Seeing that name, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, there it is!’” Lyles exclaimed.
Gold and bronze for Ukrainian high jumpers
Yaroslava Mahuchikh won Olympic gold in the high jump for war-torn Ukraine, and to her delight, her teammate Iryna Gerashchenko took home the bronze. The teammates paraded around the track, celebrating with their blue-and-yellow flags.
Mahuchikh needed fewer attempts to clear 2 meters than Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers, clinching the sport’s most prestigious prize.
Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen is a go for the men’s 1,500
Track’s premier rivalry will peak on Tuesday when reigning world champion Josh Kerr of Britain faces off against defending Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway.
In Sunday’s semifinal, Ingebrigtsen edged out Kerr, glancing over twice during their homestretch surge to win in 3:32.38.
“They should be expecting one of the most vicious and hardest 1,500s the sport’s seen in a very long time,” Kerr said.
“Depends who you ask,” Ingebrigtsen quipped. “Racing is what you want it to be.”
