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PARIS – For months, Noah Lyles aggressively chased their place. He invited Netflix cameras to follow him wherever he went, speeding through the streets of Milan and Paris and volunteering to be a guest on the late night talk circuit.
Whenever a microphone or camera is around, Lyles hasn’t been shy about setting his big goals for the Paris Olympics. America’s fastest man has told anyone who will listen how he intends to eclipse the legendary Usain Bolt, how he hopes to win four Olympic gold medals, how he would like to return home to and world record holder.
“Now you’re going to Mount Rushmore,” he recently explained to the “Tonight Show’s” Jimmy Fallon. “Now you are the greatest of all.”
The first chance for Lyles to back up his powerful speech finally came on Sunday night when 80,000 roaring fans packed the Stade de France to watch the stadium’s best race. Lyles took his place along with his competitors for the Olympic 100 meters. For one, the title of fastest man in the world was a run of less than a second 10 only.
Lyles, a former actress, appeared in the tunnel of the Stade de France with white beads woven into her hair, nails decorated in red, white and blue. When introduced by the PA announcer, he ran 15 meters down the track, jumping up and down and encouraging the crowd to turn up the heat.
After the gun went off, Lyles surprisingly burst out of the blocks and sped off like his spikes were rocketed. He walked down the track, leaned over the finish line and looked at the video board, waiting to see if he had done enough to win his first Olympic gold medal.
He had… in the blink of an eye.
Lyles earned the USA’s first gold medal in the men’s 100 in 20 years, crossing the finish line in a personal-best 9.79 seconds. Kishane Thompson of Jamaica finished second, five thousandths of a second behind the American. Fred Kerley of the United States won the bronze medal with a personal best of 9.81 seconds.
As they waited for the video board to reveal the winner, Thompson said Lyles told him, “Kishane, you got it.”
“No, I’m not sure,” the young Jamaican replied.
Thompson knew he had runners on either side of him, but he wasn’t sure about Lyles on the 7th.
“It was very close,” Thompson said.
As Lyles said earlier this summer at the US Olympic trials, “I thrive on big times. The longer the time, the faster I run.”
Lyles’ first Olympic gold medal is a big step for him as he sees a comeback in his efforts to go from Olympian to icon, from celebrity to celebrity. To reach the standard in his game, the bar is impossibly high. It’s not enough to break Michael Johnson’s American record 200 years ago, nor did I pull off the fastest sprint at the World Championships last August.
Lyles needed to excel in one area that was especially important to American viewers. Fair or not, Lyles must follow in the footsteps of Bolt, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps. You have to collect gold medals, world records and heroic deeds on the Olympic stage.
For Lyles to call it an Olympic gold medal in the 100 is a very encouraging sign for his campaign in Paris. The 200 is Lyles’ choice, his first love, the event that expands his talents. He holds his pace as well as any sprinter since Bolt, often enabling him to swallow up anyone in front of him as he rounds the corner and glides to the finish line.
100 is Lyles’ “side chick” as he said, an event that does not come naturally but that he has worked hard to master. Knowing that he struggles to get out of the blocks as quickly as other world-class runners, Lyles is perpetually tensed at the start. The plan was to find a way to stay in touch with 30 yards without sacrificing Lyles’ ability to reach top speed and maintain it.
In his opening 100 on Saturday morning, Lyles got off to a sluggish start and had to settle for second place behind reigning NCAA champion Louie Hinchcliffe of Great Britain. He said that he expected every field to “fall in line” behind him and that he would not make the mistake of underestimating his opponents.
“What time do you think you should run to win the gold medal?” the reporter asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll run it,” Lyles mumbled.
Lyles ran the fastest race in Sunday night’s first semifinal, but also crossed the finish line in second place. Oblique Seville of Jamaica ran a best of 9.81 seconds and upset Lyles by two hundredths of a second, looking to his left at the American at the end of the race as if to say, “Where are you?”
Three years ago, during the last round of the Olympics, Lyles wasn’t ready to take his time. Maybe it was the lack of crowds to draw energy from the times of COVID. Perhaps it was a nagging knee injury that hampered his training. Maybe it was something else.
Whatever the reason, Lyles failed to qualify for Tokyo in the 100. He settled for bronze in the 200 when Canada’s Andre De Grasse and fellow American Kenny Bednarek edged him out. until late at the end of the Olympics.
Lyles called his bronze medal “boring” in Tokyo. At the US Olympic Trials earlier this summer, he said seeing it motivates him.
“I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m doing enough,'” Lyles said. “Then I turn around and look at the award – ‘Okay, back to work.’
After backing up his big speech, Lyles finally has the Olympic gold medal he’s been longing for.
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