- Noah Lyles wins Olympic gold
DLNews Sports:
Noah Lyles wins the 100-meter sprint in an unbelievable photo finish.
Incredibly close! Lyles (3rd from bottom) wins the final by a razor-thin margin.
Noah Lyles (27) won the 100-meter race at the Olympic Games in Paris. In 9.79 seconds, the American became the fastest person on the planet.
Insane: Lyles wins with just 0.005 seconds ahead of Kishane Thompson (also 9.79/Jamaica).
A photo finish decides the winner at the finish!
The view from above! It even looks like Lyles (lane 7) didn't win here.
Downright crazy: Lyles initially assumed Thompson had won. The US sprinter: “I went up to him at the finish and said: You did it! When I saw my name pop up, I thought: Oh my god!”
Bronze goes to Fred Kerley (9.81) from the USA.
What a crazy thing: For the first time in Olympic history, all eight finalists ran under 10 seconds! Tokyo Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs (29/Italy) “only” came fifth in the final (9.85 seconds) but still ran a season’s best.
It also means that after 20 years of waiting, the Americans finally have an Olympic champion again on the prestigious 100-meter course. Back then, doping offender Justin Gaitlin (42) won gold at the Summer Games in Athens.
It is the closest 100-meter final of all time. Ultimately, the first six sprinters are only seven-hundredths of a second apart. Lyles and Thompson are only separated by a photo finish—it’s even just a matter of thousandths of a second.
The fans in the Stade de France in Paris go wild—and Lyles is the showman. As soon as he comes in, he puts in a mega sprint, hopping across the purple track and waving his arms wildly. The American, whose nerves failed him on the sprinters’ main course in Tokyo, stands up to the pressure.
Lyles gets off the block badly, as he often does, but then he turns it on and sprints past everyone. He throws his shoulders forward at the finish line, sprinting past the Jamaican.
But Lyles is still a long way from the world record of legend Usain Bolt (37/9.58 seconds). The American swears he can have an even more remarkable career than the Jamaican. Lyles before the Paris Games: “That’s my plan. I have the personality, I have the speed, I have the entertainment gene.”
Now he has Olympic gold! He also won two more medals—in the 200-meter and the 4x100-meter relay.
“This is how Lyles does things! 🌟”
In the sprint world, Lyles is celebrated like a rock star. He is the face of the new Netflix documentary "Sprint," which follows the American up close.
His childhood is also a topic there. Lyles struggled with asthma as a young boy and says in the documentary: "There were hardly any nights when I wasn't in the hospital and given medication." His family repeatedly struggled with financial worries, sometimes unable to pay electricity bills.
When his parents separated, he suffered from depression for the first time in his life. Sport offered him an escape. Sprint legend Linford Christie (64) says of him: "He has great potential, but in the end, it will come down to his head. He puts himself under pressure and says many things that people don't like."
His behavior is part of Lyles' business. He loves painting his fingernails white and has the word "ICON" written in Paris.
Lyles even recently graced the cover of the famous "Time Magazine." With Olympic gold around his neck, his advertising value will only increase!
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