Noah Lyles stood solidly and unshaken in his thought that the title of “world’s fastest man” belongs to nobody but him since last August. He proved it on Sunday night at the Stade de France. Lyles edged past a field full of top sprinters to win his first Olympic gold medal in the 100-meter final with a personal-best time of 9.784 seconds.
He achieved the win by beating Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson, who pocketed the world’s fastest time this year, by just 0.005 of a second. It was the closest 100-meter final since at least the Moscow 1980 Olympics, where Great Britain’s Allan Wells slightly defeated Silvio Leonard in 10.25 seconds, a time in our history when timing didn’t go down to the thousandths of a second.
According to Omega, at the 65.15-meter mark, Lyles hit his peak speed of 43.6 km/h (27.1 mph) and maintained that rate till the end of the race, despite winning at that point. Lyles breaks this record as the first American to clinch this celebrated race since Justin Gatlin did it in 2004.
If Lyles reaches the 200-meter finals on Wednesday night, he will have the opportunity to win a second gold medal. The only other Olympic medal that Kyle’s possesses is a bronze, which he received in the 200 meters at the Tokyo Games in 2020.
Those who participated in Sunday’s 100-meter final include defending Olympic gold medalist Marcell Jacobs of Italy; Thompson, who came in with the world’s fastest time this year (9.77); and two of Lyles’ countrymen, Kenny Bednarek and Fred Kerley. Kerley came in third in the competition, making him earn bronze with a time of 9.81 seconds, while Bednarek came in seventh in the competition with a time of 9.88 seconds.
The time between Thompson’s and his Jamaican trials time earlier this summer in the final was only 0.02 of a second slower, which seemed to indicate he would end up on the podium in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Thompson was seen to lead for much of the sprint until Lyles bolted ahead in the final 10 meters, causing a thrilling photo finish.
Team Jamaica put the rest of the runners on notice during the semifinal round an hour and a half earlier. Thompson’s 9.80-second semifinal sprint was the fastest of the round. Jamaican teammate Oblique Seville was the athlete behind him, who ran a personal-record 9.81 seconds in a different heat that Lyles participated in.
Seville had earlier faced Lyles in the Bahamas in June. Seville emerged as the winner of that race, defeating Lyles with only 9.82 seconds, and Lyles ended 0.03 seconds later. After winning the 100-meter world championship in Budapest, Hungary, last August, Lyles began embracing the “world’s fastest man” nickname.
