‘I would have run faster’

Noah Lyles has disclosed what affected his speed in the men’s 100m final against Kishane Thompson at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Noah Lyles’ torso played a huge role in deciding who won the men’s 100m final at the Paris Olympic Games but looking back the triple world champion wishes he could not have leant.

Noah Lyles explained that in a recent research, he discovered that he would have run faster if he just kept the pace and not leant.

The three-time world 200m champion clocked 9.79 seconds, five-thousandths of a second ahead of Kishane Thompson. Fred Kerley completed the podium in 9.81 seconds.

The reigning Olympic 100m champion noted that leaning requires a lot of technique and at some point, he had to slow down while preparing for that. If he had not leant, Noah Lyles is confident that he could have gone faster.

“I was watching data recently and if I didn’t lean, I would have run a lot faster in that 100m. You tend to lose the energy because you’re now preparing your body to slow down because you have to throw your body out in front of you so you don’t fall, you have to prepare your arm swing,” Noah Lyles said on the Toure Show.

“If I had run to the line with the same momentum that I had or even a faster momentum, I would have run faster and while they leaned, I would have been speeding.”

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Speaking about his mindset in a race, Noah Lyles explained that he tends to maintain his main focus on execution if it’s a huge event like the World Championships or Olympic Games.

He revealed that thinking about other things takes a lot of energy that should be invested in the race, hence his decision to always maintain focus on the race.

“If I’m thinking about something, there’s something wrong because I’m taking energy away from the activity that I’m doing in the present and I’m just going and going and I might think, ‘Go faster.’,” Noah Lyles revealed.

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“Somebody was getting a little too far ahead of me and I said, ‘Now like I have to move now and if I don’t move now, then I’m going to be out of this completely.’ It was about the 30m or the 25m mark and my body did what I told it to do.”

“I could probably see two lanes but all my biggest hitters, Fred and Kishane were three to four lanes over so I could not turn my head cause that’s wasted energy.”

If he could have been taken back to the Paris Olympic Games with the information he has right now, Noah Lyles is confident that he would have made the men’s 100m final more memorable and probably historical than the 2008 Olympic Games final.