Noah Lyles emptied the tank in the 200-meter final at the 2024 Summer Olympics on Thursday, but it was not enough for the rare track-and-field double.
Letsile Tobogo of Botswana secured a historic gold for Africa — the first man from the continent to nab the top spot at the 200m — while Lyles had to settle for bronze behind fellow American Kenny Bednarek, who took a second-straight silver at this event.
Lyles’ time of 19.70 seconds was nearly three-tenths (0.3) of a second off his personal best (19.31) in a 200m race that has often been considered his signature event. But a loaded schedule that featured a historic run for gold in the 100m on Sunday clearly appeared to take its toll as it was revealed after the race that he was diagnosed with COVID on Tuesday.
Questions of his health had come into question as he was seen wearing a mask in recent days. Those only strengthened when he went down following the race and was in need of medical attention.
The 27-year-old Alexandria, VA was attempting to become just the 10th Olympian ever to win the 100m and 200m at the same Games and the first American to do so in 40 years.
- Archie Hahn (USA): 1904
- Ralph Craig (USA): 1912
- Percy Williams (Canada): 1928
- Eddie Tolan (USA): 1932
- Jesse Owens (USA) 1936
- Bobby Morrow (USA): 1956
- Valeriy Borzov (Ukraine): 1972
- Carl Lewis (United States): 1984
- Usain Bolt (Jamaica): 2008, 2012, 2016
But it never looked as though he was going to challenge for gold, especially considering he had the slowest reaction time off the blocks (0.173 seconds) amongst the field of eight runners.
From Lane 5, he managed to make up the slow start and get into third, but could not catch Bednarek, who ran a 19.62-second race, and Tebogo, who set an African record of 19.46 seconds.
Lyles took the mantle of fastest man alive on Sunday when he narrowly defeated Jamaica’s Krishane Thompson by a razor-thin 0.005 (five-one-thousandths of a second). To put into perspective just how close of a finish that was, the average human’s blink of an eye lasts between 0.1 to 0.4 seconds, per Harvard University.
Lyles had finished second in his semifinal qualifying heat on Wednesday to Tebogo (19.96 seconds). He had the third-quickest qualifying time overall at 20.08 seconds, also behind Bednarek
A third American, Erryon Knighton, finished fourth at 19.99 seconds.
