Noah Lyles repays American sprinter by winning Olympic gold in 100-meter dash

SAINT-DENIS, France — Maybe it is time to stop complaining in regards to the state of sprinting in the United States.

On Sunday, three American sprinters made it to the 100-meter final, with the leader of the group, Noah Lyles, taking victory with nothing left to lose in some of the competitive finals in Olympic history.

A near-perfect race and a fall at the tip, but Lyles, 27, edged Jamaican Kishane Thompson with a private better of 9.784 seconds. Thompson also clocked 9.79 seconds, but Lyles finished 0.005 seconds faster. Lyles’ teammate Fred Kerley took bronze.

The race was so close that Lyles, in real time, said he thought Thompson had won. “We were waiting for the names to come out, and honestly, I walked up and was like, ‘I think you’ve got the Olympics, dawg,’” Lyles said.

Thompson, who was competing in his first Olympics, remembered Lyles coming over after the race but had no idea what had just happened.

“When we both crossed the finish line, he said, he came up to me and said, ‘Hey, man, I think you made it,’” Thompson recalled. “I was like, ‘Wow, I’m not even sure,’ because it was so close.”

Lyles was flying blind in the race. Thompson was in lane 4, and Lyles, who was in lane 7, didn’t see how strong Thompson was racing. Luckily for Lyles, he listened to the inner voice that spoke up as he approached the tape. “Something said I had to lean in, and I thought, ‘I’m going to lean in,’ because that was the kind of race it was,” he said.

It turned out to be a bull’s eye.

Of course, that is what the Olympics are all about. An athlete trains for years to give you the chance to compete when the test comes. We’ve seen Simone Biles do it in gymnastics, Katie Ledecky do it in swimming. On Sunday, the world saw Lyles do it on the track.

The better part of Sunday’s race is that Lyles was the loudest voice in the room — raucous, talking trash and calling names. And in the moment of truth, he lived as much as expectations.

“I mean, it’s good to support that,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of scenarios where athletes come in as favorites and they don’t make it. Knowing that it could happen still drives me, and it’s just continuing to go that extra step, knowing that at any moment someone could come along.”

At the beginning of the season, many track pundits predicted that 2024 could be a weak 12 months for sprints.

“Well, it wasn’t a bad year in terms of top-100 results,” Lyles said.

It was a fantastic race, a dramatic victory and an invigorating moment for American track and field. Since the 100-meter dash became the cornerstone of Olympic competition, the United States has been a dominant force. Excluding Sunday’s result, the United States has won 16 of the 29 men’s gold medals and nine of the 22 women’s gold medals in Olympic history. But there was a major drought.

The thought loomed over not only Lyles’ heads but all the American sprinting community that American sprinters, once a feared commodity on the international stage, had lost their confidence. No one feared American sprinters as much as they once did, even going back to names from years past like Charley Paddock, Eddie Tolan, Jesse Owens, and Wilma Rudolph.

Because of Bob Hayes’ “Bullet” on the 1964 Tokyo Games, critics coined the term “Fastest Man in the World” and gave the title to the winner of the 100 meters. Carl Lewis won back-to-back 100-meter Olympic titles in 1984 and 1988, after which Maurice Green—a relative unknown—showed how deep the United States’ sprint bench was when he won gold on the 2000 Sydney Games.

Who would have guessed when Justin Gatlin won the 100-meter dash in 2004 that his victory would prove to be the last Olympic gold medal for the United States in the event until Sunday evening when Lyles was forced to run the race of his life.

Critics mistakenly attribute the United States’ Olympic medal drought to poor training. The truth is that sprinting remains to be extremely popular in the United States. It’s just that many sprinters come from outside the country.

The United States training system continues to draw and train lots of the world’s best sprinters. The proven fact that athletes can earn scholarships to school makes the system attractive to international athletes.

Julien Alfred, who became St. Lucia’s first Olympic champion on Saturday by defeating Sha’Carri Richardson to win the ladies’s 100 meters, ran in college for the University of Texas. While Lyles decided to show pro after highschool, Kerley attended community college. They are a part of a rebirth.

Lyles said Sunday he wants his gold-medal performance to catch the attention of U.S. sprinters, citing the critically acclaimed Netflix series for instance.

“I would like to see the continuation of being able to leverage moments for our sport,” he said. “What we need to do as a sport is leverage it and say, ‘Hey, we need to make this as accessible as possible for people to come and watch. It needs to be accessible because this is a global sport and we need to be able to show it to the world.’”

Before the media session ended, a reporter asked Lyles what he expected from his individual Olympic performances, which could yield at the least two more gold medals. This week, he’ll run the 200 meters and the 4×100 relay.

“I want my own shoe,” he said without hesitation. Lyles noted that the good Michael Johnson never owned a shoe of his own. “I need my very own trainer. I need a sneaker; there’s no money in spikes.

“I think considering the number of medals we brought home, the publicity we got, the fact that it didn’t happen is crazy to me.”

Lyles won an exciting race on Sunday and gave the American sprinting community a beautiful gift: its prestige was restored.