Noah Lyles stood at the opposite end of the track, with his arms crossed over his head, eagerly gazing up at the scoreboard which would eventually reveal the answer he had been seeking for over three years of hard work. Was all the effort he had put in since the last Olympics, including training and weightlifting, going to pay off? He waited for 10 seconds, then 20, and finally almost 30 seconds before the result appeared. Lyles had won the 100-meter race at the Paris Olympics, making him the World’s Fastest Man.
However, his victory was by a very small margin, with only a difference of five-thousandths of a second between him and Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson. It was a race to remember, with Lyles finishing in 9.784 seconds and Thompson in 9.789 seconds. Lyles recalled how his physiotherapist had predicted before the race that it would be a close call, and he was proven right. Lyles even demonstrated the small gap between the two sprinters by pinching his thumb and forefinger close together. The race was so close that when “Photo” appeared next to the names of the top finishers, Lyles approached Thompson and jokingly told him that he had won. However, Thompson was not sure as he had no idea where he placed on the track during the race.
In the end, Lyles was declared the winner, and he celebrated by holding his name tag up to the sky and shouting “I told you America, I got this!” The top four finishers were separated by less than 0.03 seconds, with the top seven all finishing within 0.09 seconds of each other. Lyles’ American teammate Fred Kerley came in third with a time of 9.81 seconds and described it as one of the most beautiful races he had been a part of. The photo finish revealed that Kerley’s orange shoe had crossed the finish line first, but it was Lyles’ chest that had broken the barrier. This was the closest 1-2 finish in the 100-meter race since at least 1980, and possibly ever. Lyles admitted that during the agonizing wait for the result, he was worried that he had leaned too early at the finish line. However, he was relieved to find out that he had won with a new personal best time of 9.784 seconds. This also made him the first American to win the 100-meter race at the Olympics since Justin Gatlin in 2004.
Lyles hopes to bring back the excitement and popularity of track and field, similar to the days of Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses, with his performances. After winning the 200-meter race at the world championships last year, Lyles set his sights on the 100-meter race in Paris as his new goal. Despite not being known for his starts, he persisted and worked on it during training. In the final, he faced strong competition from Thompson and another Jamaican sprinter, Oblique Seville, who had both beaten him earlier in the year. As the runners waited for the race to start, Thompson let out a primal scream, which Lyles had often done in his races. Lyles was amazed and said that it was his thing. After a delay of three minutes, the race finally began. In the end, Lyles’ winning formula was a combination of his speed in the closing stages of the race and his ability to keep up with the other sprinters in the first 60 meters, a skill he had been working on extensively since he started competing in the 100-meter race.
Lyles emphasized that every runner in the race had the potential to win, and it was his determination and hard work that made him the champion. It took 9.784 seconds for Lyles to win the race, but it took him a little longer to see his name on the scoreboard and realize that he had achieved his goal. He described the feeling of seeing his name as “unbelievable.”
