With his compatriot Sha’Carri Richardson in the women’s category, Noah Lyles is the leader of the American athletics delegation. The sprinter has the ambition of winning four gold medals at the 2024 Olympics, starting with the 100m. The United States, crushed by Usain Bolt’s Jamaica for years, has been waiting 20 years to get its hands on this symbolic title again.
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From our special correspondent at the Stade de France,
To do better than Usain Bolt. This is the huge goal that Noah Lyles has set for himself for the JO 2024. Six times world champion including four times in individual, the American arrives in Paris to finally add gold to his Olympic record, he who only won bronze in the 200m in 2021 in Tokyo. He announced his intentions at the start of the year by declaring ” aim even higher ” that the legendary Boltauthor of a 100m-200m-4x100m triple at the 2012 Olympics and then at the 2016 Olympics*.
Noah Lyles is aiming for an unprecedented quadruple at the Olympic Games: 100m-200m-4x100m and 4x400m. Such a feat would make Uncle Sam’s country happy, where they had to make do with a few crumbs left by Jamaican athletes, both men and women, in the sprint events. The 100m, the premier distance that has so often brought joy to Americans at the Olympics, has been eluding them for 20 years.
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Team USA has had two fierce competitors in the last two decades, heirs to Maurice Greene, gold medalist in the 100m in 2000. The first, Justin Gatlin, crowned in 2004 in Athens, was labelled the ugly duckling of the circuit after a long suspension for doping. The second, Tyson Gay, third fastest man in history in the 100m (9”69, tied with Jamaican Yohan Blake, behind Bolt’s 9”58 and 9”63), suffered the dictatorship of the Jamaican alien and his lieutenants, and was in turn caught for doping.
Thus, the United States was reduced to playing second fiddle at the Olympics in the 100m behind the untouchable showman Usain Bolt: bronze in 2008 for Walter Dix, bronze then silver for Gatlin in 2012 and 2016… Even after the retirement of “Lightning Bolt” in 2017, the Americans stumbled again at the Tokyo Games in 2021: Fred Kerley took silver, while the unexpected Italian Marcell Jacobs won.
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Complicated introduction
For Noah Lyles, this drought has lasted long enough. At 27, the Floridian arrives at the Stade de France confident, a year after his 100m-200m-4x100m triple at the Budapest World Championships. He also has a total relaxation, a mischievous attitude that of course recalls Usain Bolt, who loved playing with the public and the cameras.
On Saturday, August 3, for the 100m heats, Noah Lyles nevertheless entered his Games timidly. Winner on the applause meter, he only took second place in his heat (10”04 behind the 9”98 of the British Louie Hinchliffe). Author of an average race, he had a bad start, a constant which also explains why he is more comfortable in the 200m than in the 100m. I was trying not to burn too many cartridges in a row and not to overdo it. But it was harder than expected, the competitors gave it their all and I should have expected that, since it’s the Olympics. “, conceded the world champion.
The American would do well to find his rhythm for the semi-finals and the possible final scheduled for Sunday evening, August 4, because the battle promises to be fierce. His compatriots Kerley and Kenneth Bednarek, the great Jamaican hopes Oblique Seville and Kishane Thomson, the Botswana nugget Letsile Tebogothe dangerous Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyalathe reigning Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs, the six-time Canadian Olympic medalist Andre De Grasse… All these great players have made it through the playoffs and will face off on Sunday.
* Usain Bolt also won the 100m-200m-4x100m triple at the 2008 Olympics, but the relay title was later stripped from the Jamaicans due to a positive doping test for one of their own, Nesta Carter.
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