Noah Lyles on the tactical gamble he belives cost him an even faster time in the Paris Olympic 100m final, despite narrowly edging out Kishane Thompson.
Noah Lyles, who was crowned Olympic 100m champion in Paris after an electrifying photo-finish race, has opened up about a tactical decision that may have cost him an even faster time.
The American sprinter narrowly edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by a mere 0.005 seconds, with both clocking 9.79 seconds—a personal best for Lyles. Fred Kerley secured bronze, finishing just 0.02 seconds behind.
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Reflecting on the tightly contested race, Lyles admitted it was one of the most grueling challenges of his career. A slow reaction time off the blocks put him at a disadvantage early on, forcing him to stage a dramatic comeback.
“All I can remember is probably the last 20 meters. I remember the gun went off, and I just started running,” Lyles recalled on the DCP Entertainment YouTube channel.
“Somebody was getting too far ahead of me, and I said ‘Now!’ around the 25-30 meter mark, and my body did what I wanted it to do, give more intensity.”
However, the final meters proved decisive. Lyles resorted to leaning at the finish line, a rare move in his races, to clinch the gold. In hindsight, he believes this choice hindered his performance.
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“Leaning is so controversial in my opinion. I was watching data recently, and it said that if I did not lean, I would have run much faster,” he explained.
“You lose energy because you are now preparing your body to slow down… If I would have just ran to the line with the same momentum that I had or faster, I would have ran faster, and while they leaned, I would have been speeding up.”
Lyles’ victory was made even more remarkable by the caliber of his competition. Thompson entered the Olympics as the fastest man of the year, clocking a blistering 9.77 seconds at Jamaica’s national trials.
He maintained stellar form during the preliminaries, overshadowing Lyles with a 9.82-second performance.
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After the race, Lyles opened up about the anxiety everyone experienced, considering it took a while for the winner to be announced.
The stakes were so tight, Lyles initially thought Thompson had really edged him out, only to be pleasantly surprised he was the winner.
“I do not know if I got third, or second. I do not know what happened. I remember going up to Kishane and was like, ’I think you got that, big dog’ because I did not know,” Lyles continued.
“In my head I was like ‘I am just going to swallow my pride and they will go at me in the media’.”
“In my mind, I was like ‘damn, whatever had happened is alot closer than what I thought had happened. I was like ‘I wonder what it is like because Fred and Kishane’, so we did not get to see what they were measuring. We were just like ‘what is gonna pop up?’”
Though the race delivered one of the most thrilling finishes in Olympic history, Lyles’ introspection underscores his relentless pursuit of perfection. His gold medal may have solidified his place among sprinting’s elite, but his quest for ever faster times remains unyielding.
