Newly-crowned Olympic champion Noah Lyles revealed he thought Jamaica's Kishane Thompson had beaten him to 100 metres gold following their photo finish in Paris.
Every occupant of the 80,000-seat Stade de France seemed to inhale at once before a roar erupted as the 27-year-old American’s name appeared first on the screen, then announced to the stadium as the victor by just five thousandths of a second, a winning time of 9.79.784 seconds.
The 27-year-old rang the victory bell hard, fait accompli after setting out to settle the "fastest man" debate once and for all in France.
Five one-thousandths of a second.
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 4, 2024
Noah Lyles is the Olympic 100m men's champion but the finish could barely have been closer#RTESport #Paris2024
📺 Watch https://t.co/XnOP6grnB7… 📱Updates https://t.co/3UwmvDdtCu pic.twitter.com/3PPfbE5NBO
Lyles, whose US team-mate Fred Kerley took bronze, said: "I knew that when the time came, for me to be able to say 'this is the final, this is where I need to put it together' I was going to do it.
"I did think (Thompson) had it at the end. I went up to him after, while we were waiting, and I even said ‘I think you’ve got that, good going,’ and then my name popped up and I’m like ‘oh my gosh, I’m amazing’.
"I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t ready to see it (his name) and that’s the first time I’ve ever said that. I wasn’t ready to see it.
"He was quite a few lanes down, he was in four, I was in seven so it was hard for me to picture where we were."
The American world 100m and 200m champion's triumph comes three summers after he entered the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics as the 200m favourite and world champion – but only claimed bronze.
Afterwards, he opened up about a lifelong battle with depression and the challenges of balancing the benefits of antidepressant medication with side effects that led to weight gain and affected his ability to perform – ultimately electing to wean off the treatment before those Games.
Earlier this week, he acknowledged he performs better in front of a full house, remembering the moment on the start line in Tokyo when he would usually say to himself "it’s showtime", but instead found himself thinking "this is not it. This is not fun. This is not cool. This is not what I wanted."
Lyles had no such trouble in Paris, where he thumped his chest at the start line and pumped up the electrified crowd, clearly revelling in the occasion, before they fell so quiet at the start of the race that it was possible to hear a plane passing overhead.
Then the man whose weakness is often said to be his starts got off to the joint slowest, an 0.178 reaction time alongside Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo.
Lyles, only learning that fact from a journalist, said: "Slowest reaction time – that’s crazy! I thought I was a little better than that but that goes to prove that reaction time does not win races."
"I dreamed about this moment" - The world's fastest man, Noah Lyles, spoke to @DavidGillick after winning the 100m final by five thousandths of a second from Kishane Thompson | Report: https://t.co/XkerIjEkdV #Paris2024 #OlympicGames pic.twitter.com/eV6PA85Lje
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 5, 2024
He entered these Olympics with the third-fastest time at 100m this year behind Thompson’s world-leading 9.77 and Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala’s 9.79, and as a result found himself in a position of needing to back up his signature bravado on Sunday night.
Thompson qualified fastest of the semi-finalists in 9.80, his compatriot Seville Oblique just behind him in a personal-best 9.81 and Lyles two hundredths of a second behind.
Oblique was the only man who did not have to wait for his place to be confirmed – the last-placed man in 9.91.
Lyles is in Paris with a point to prove, embroiled in a debate before the Games about who was currently fastest man on the planet – not that he ever had any doubts.
The Floridian – who is looking to do the double in the 200 metres – emphatically reiterated his answer, this time with his feet instead of his rhetoric.
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