PARIS – Omega is an Olympic sponsor and handles the timekeeping operation at the track and field meet. For these Games, it introduced the Scan‘O’Vision Ultimate photo finish camera, which replaced the Scan‘O’Vision Myria camera used previously.
The Myria could record 10,000 digital images per second to separate a crunch of humans crossing a finish line at once. The Ultimate can capture 40,000 per second.
They needed it.
When the eight finalists in the men’s 100 meters leaned all at once, then looked to the Stade de France’s giant video board, this is what they saw next to the top seven finishers’ names: Photo, Photo, Photo, Photo, Photo, Photo, Photo.
After several nervous moments, one name appeared on top: Noah Lyles.
That’s how the U.S. Olympic men’s sprint drought ended, with Lyles edging Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by .005, or 5/1000ths of a second. Or about 2 inches on the track.
It’s the closest 100 final since at least the boycotted 1980 Olympic Games, when Great Britain’s Allan Wells and Cuba’s Sylvio Leonard both were given times of 10.25 since they didn’t have the capacity to extend them to the thousandths of seconds.
“We were waiting for the names to come up, and I (told Thompson), ‘I gotta be honest, I think you got that one, big dog,’” Lyles said. “He was out in Lane 4. I was in Lane 7. I couldn’t really see what was going on over there. I just had to keep running. Something said: ‘I need to lean.’”
Fellow American Fred Kerley in Lane 3 actually had the first body part cross the finish line, an orange shoe on his right foot. But in track, it’s the torso that matters, and Lyles’ just beat Thompson’s, 9.784 to 9.789 seconds. Kerley was third in 9.81.
South Africa’s Akani Simbine was fourth at 9.82, followed by Tokyo champion Marcell Jacobs of Italy at 9.85 and Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo at 9.86. The entire eight-man field, in fact, was all 9.91 or under, separated by a mere .12 seconds.
Context: When Usain Bolt won his first 100 gold in 2008 in Beijing, he crossed a full .20 seconds ahead of second place.
Lyles and the Americans aren’t complaining. Photo finish or boat race, it’s a gold medal in the men’s sprints for the nation that once dominated them. Finally.
In the 20 unboycotted Summer Games between 1912 and 2004, the American men won at least one of the three sprint events — 100, 200 or 4×100 relay — in 19 of them. Entering Sunday night, they had gone four straight Olympics without winning any of them. The last 100 gold was by Justin Gatlin in 2004 in Athens (and he later ran afoul of anti-doping regulations).
But to Lyles, at least by his words and actions, this was less about winning for his country than winning for his ego.
When his name appeared on the video board above Thompson, Lyles pulled his bib number with “LYLES” across it, held it aloft and skipped down the backstretch and around the far turn near the start. Nearly all medalists first go to the crowd and retrieve a flag to celebrate with.
It wasn’t until a few minutes later that Kerley, with a flag draped over his head, ran to Lyles and handed him one folded up. Lyles didn’t immediately unfurl it or continue the victory lap with his fellow American, instead motioning photographers to run across the infield with him for a photo by himself.
“I hope you guys like Noah,” Lyles said later, “because I’ve got a lot more coming.”
The 100 meters was considered the hardest of the three golds Lyles targeted in Paris. He’s won the last three world titles in the 200, his best event, and the U.S. is favored in the 4×100 relay with three Americans making the individual 100 final (although there’s always the matter of getting the baton around the track without, ahem, dropping it).
Lyles won all three at the world championships last summer in Budapest, Hungary.
“Pretty confident, I can’t lie,” he said of the 200, next up on the Paris schedule. “My job is to make sure that, I’ll just leave it there. I’ll be winning.”
Kerley, sitting next to him at the medalists’ news conference, interjected: “Talk your (smack), man.”
Lyles continued: “That man ain’t winning. None of them is winning. When I come off the turn, they will be depressed.”
Part of Lyles’ bravado is his personality. Part of it, though, is marketing, a calculated quest to raise the sport’s fading profile through showmanship and celebrity.
In a recent profile in Time magazine, Lyles chronicles his negotiations with Adidas for a shoe contract and receiving an invitation to a sneaker-release event for Minnesota Timberwolves star (and U.S. Olympic team member) Anthony Edwards. And declining.
“You want to do what?” Lyles told Time. “You want to invite me to (an event for) a man who has not even been to an NBA Finals? In a sport that you don’t even care about? And you’re giving him a shoe? … All I’m asking is, ‘How could you not see that for me?’”
Lyles eventually signed an endorsement deal with Adidas, and Sunday he renewed his call for a signature sneaker line.
Not a track spike. A sneaker.
“Dead serious,” Lyles said. “I want a sneaker. There ain’t no money in spikes. There’s money in sneakers. Even (former 200 and 400 world-record holder) Michael Johnson didn’t have his own sneaker. I feel like for how many medals we bring back, the notoriety we get, the fact that it hasn’t happened is crazy to me. Yeah, that needs to happen.”
Not asking for signature sneaker was Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh, the world-record holder who now has a gold medal. She just wants peace.
It was one of three medals claimed by Ukraine on a day only nine were awarded, with fellow high jumper Iryna Gerashchenko and men’s hammer thrower Mykhaylo Kokhan both getting bronzes.
“We won medals for our Ukrainian people and for our defenders,” Makuchikh said. “It’s really important. For our athletes, it gives us (a stage) to talk about our situation, to talk about the war in Ukraine because we want peace. Unfortunately, it’s not possible, even while the Olympic Games are going on, because Russia took a lot of rocket attacks to my city and to all cities in Ukraine.
“It’s really tough.”
Rancho Bernardo High School alum Nia Akins ran the women’s 800-meter semifinals and just missed advancing. The top two finishers in each of three semis get a spot in the eight-woman final, plus the next two fastest times.
Akins, at 1:58.20, had the third fastest time.
“It just didn’t work out today,” said Akins, 26, who qualified for Paris by winning the U.S. Olympic trials. “I was just trying to listen to my body and run the fastest race I could. That’s all I had. It happens sometimes. I think I raced it to the best of my ability, stayed out of trouble, moved at all the right times. It’s just some good competition out there and it wasn’t my day.
“I’ve reached the point in my faith where, if it’s not God’s will, it’s not God’s will. That’s unfortunately the luck of the draw. If He doesn’t want it for me, I don’t want it, either.”
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