Noah Lyles talked the talk, walked the walk, and ran the race.
The 27-year-old Gainesville, FL native is the Olympic champion at the men’s 100m dash at the 2024 Paris Games, ending a 20-year-old American drought in the event in a photo finish.
Lyles, the 2023 world champion, defeated Jamaica’s Kishane Thompsom — widely regarded as the favorite for this race — by the slimmest of margins of 0.005 seconds (five-one-thousandths). Justin Gatlin was the last American to win gold in this race at the 2004 Games in Athens.
The finish was so close that it was Thompson who initially believed that he won the race. It was not until a short review and a tense wait that Lyles and the world learned that he was a champion when it showed the American’s torso breaking over the finish line first.
His official time of 9.784 seconds was a personal best while Thompson’s debut at a major competition yielded a time of 9.789 seconds.
Thompson’s silver ensures that Jamaica’s wait for a first gold since Usain Bolt’s retirement continues while Fred Kerley — a silver medalist at the Tokyo Games three years ago — took bronze to put two Americans on the podium. Kerley’s time of 9.81 seconds was a season-best for him and just two-one-hundredths of a second back of the top two.
Lyles did not win either of his qualifying races in Paris but remained as confident as ever.
“It wasn’t tougher. I was more expecting that they would just fall in line and they didn’t,” Lyles said leading up to the race. “They took it as ‘I got one shot and I’m going to take it.’ And to be honest, I should have expected that knowing that this is the Olympics. But this is my first time in an Olympic 100. I didn’t. That’s on me and I won’t let that happen again.”
South Africa’s Akani Simbine finished just one-hundredth of a second behind Kerley for bronze while the defending Olympic 100m champion, Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs, finished fifth with a 9.85-second sprint.
A third American in the field, Kenny Bednarek, finished seventh.
For more on Noah Lyles and the Olympics, visit AMNY.com
