How Lyles rode rollercoaster to 100m gold, so close yet so far for Thompson

A phone call with his therapist after a worrying semifinal helped propel Noah Lyles to the top of the Olympic podium on Sunday, after years of rebuilding his mental health to reach the pinnacle of his sport.

The American put on the performance of a lifetime to take the 100m gold by five-thousandths of a second in 9.79, in a blistering final where a 9.91 from Jamaican Oblique Seville was only good enough to finish last.

Seville had crossed the line ahead of Lyles in their semifinal, and the US sprinter said he needed to get into the right mindset for his medal race.

“I wouldn't say nervous — I'd say I was extremely curious as to what was going to happen. That's how me and my therapist phrase it. I’m curious as to what I’m going to do, how am I going to pull this off,” he told reporters.

“I came in third-fastest from the semis. I'm like 'This is going to be serious, this is not going to be easy'. And I had said OK, my therapist said 'You need to let go, you need to relax and you need to be yourself'.”

Lyles was familiar with all the highs and lows of his sport long before he arrived in Paris, and has publicly discussed the work he put into his mental health to rebound from the pit of depression he found himself in three years ago.

The three-time 200m world champion failed even to qualify for the shorter sprint at the US Olympic trials in 2021, and rebuilt himself — body and mind — with the singular goal of becoming the fastest man on earth.

“I did this against the best of the best, on the biggest stage, with the biggest pressure,” Lyles said. “And I wasn't even entered in the 100 in 2021. You know, here I am, first Olympics in the 100, going around now the Olympic champion.”

Lyles will compete next in the 200m as he bids for a rare Olympic sprint double, with the opening rounds set for Monday. 

Jamaica's Kishane Thompson came so close to emulating his compatriot Usain Bolt and becoming Olympic 100m champion on Sunday but Lyles denied him by a heartbeat.

Thompson led for most of the race and clocked the same 9.79 time as Lyles who won by five thousandths of a second in a photo finish after timing his dip to cross the line to perfection.

Even Lyles admitted he thought Thompson, who came into the final as the fastest man this year, had beaten him.

“He said, 'Hey Kishane I thought you got it' and I said, 'I'm not sure',” Thompson said.

“I wasn't patient enough with myself to let my speed bring me at the line, in the position that I know I could have gone to, but I have learnt from it.”

Asked if he thought the pair should share the medal, Thompson said: “I think the sport is too competitive, no offence to any other sport. It's too competitive for us to share a gold medal.”

Thompson's time — 9.789, against Lyles' 9.784 — was two hundredths of a second off his personal best of 9.77 set in June.

The Lyles-Thompson showdown was the latest chapter in a sprint rivalry between the US and Jamaica that has gripped the sport for almost two decades.

Bolt won three successive 100m and 200m Olympic golds, and Yohan Blake weighed in with a silver in 2012. In world championships, Bolt and Blake won four 100s in a row between from 2009 to 2015 while Bolt nailed four successive 200s and helped his country to four sprint relay golds.

It was a domination the US could not match during the best part of a century as the sprint superpower, and with Jamaica's women also routinely filling the top step of their podiums, the Caribbean nation was on top of the world.

Since Bolt's retirement in 2017, however, Jamaica's gold rush has dried up, and a succession of male sprinters have been built up as “the new Bolt”, a pressure they could surely do without.

“I know that Jamaica would have wanted me to get the gold, everybody loves winners,” Thompson said. “I would have loved to win today, but big up to the whole field.”

Reuters

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