Even after finishing second in his qualifying group, American sprinter Noah Lyles remained confident that he could get the 100-meter gold for Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics. On Sunday, Lyles did just that despite needing a photo finish to claim the win.
Lyles finished first with a personal best of 9.79 seconds, coming 0.005 of a second ahead of Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson. Lyles’ American teammate Fred Kerley came in third to win the bronze at 9.81. Lamont Marcell Jacobs, who won the gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, came in fifth.
Lyles initially thought that he won the silver, having trailed Thompson for the majority of the sprint.
“We were waiting for the names to pop up, and I’m going to be honest, I came over [to Thompson], and I was like: ‘I think you got that one, big dawg!’” Lyles said after the race. “Something said I need to lean, and I was like, ‘I’m going to lean,’ because it’s that type of race.”
This was Noah Lyles’ second Olympic medal, as he won silver at 200m in Tokyo. He became the first American to win the gold at the Olympics since Justin Gatlin did it in 2004 in Athens. Lyles has a chance to increase his medal count, being in the finals of 200m in Paris.
