Life comes at you quickly when you are the fastest man on the planet.
Noah Lyles, newly crowned as the Olympic champion in the men’s 100 metres, came bursting and leaping and prancing out of the tunnel before the start of the 200m final last night.
He windmilled his arms in the air and screamed his brilliance to the crowd and prepared to take the next step in his bid to cement himself as the heir to Usain Bolt.
All of 19.46 seconds later, Lyles was trailing in third behind Botswana’s first-ever Olympic gold medallist Letsile Tebogo and his fellow American Kenny Bednarek.
After collapsing on the track, Lyles wasted no time in telling the world that he had been suffering from Covid for the last three days.
Life comes at you quickly when you are the fastest man on the planet
Noah Lyles came bursting and leaping and prancing out of the tunnel before the 200m final
All of 19.46 seconds later, Lyles was trailing in third behind Botswana’s first-ever Olympic gold medallist Letsile Tebogo
One can regret his illness and the impact it may have had on him while also regretting the gracelessness of stealing Tebogo’s thunder with an excuse.
‘It definitely affected my performance,’ Lyles said. ‘I am more proud of myself than anything. Coming out and getting the bronze medal with Covid.’
Tebogo’s victory was an incredibly moving story in its own right, coming just a few months after the death of his mother and inspiration, Seratiwa.
Tebogo’s mother accompanied him to Budapest in 2023 when he won a silver medal behind Lyles in the 100m at the World Championships.
‘Letsile is not a man of many words,’ Seratiwa said not long before she died. Which makes him the opposite of Lyles.
Last night, though, Tebogo dedicated his victory to his mother and shouted out his talent with his performance.
Tebogo was so comfortable at the front that he started beating the palm of his hand against his chest before he had even crossed the line. Remind you of anyone? If there was one sprinter laying claim to Bolt’s crown in the Stade de France, it wasn’t Lyles.
‘Comparing somebody to somebody else is the lazy man’s understanding,’ Lyles said recently of the way he is measured against Bolt.
After collapsing on the track, Lyles wasted no time in telling the world that he had been suffering from Covid for the last three days
Tebogo was so comfortable at the front that he started beating the palm of his hand against his chest before he had even crossed the line
Tebogo’s victory was an incredibly moving story in its own right, coming just a few months after the death of his mother and inspiration, Seratiwa
But the truth is that he invites those comparisons by laying claim to Bolt’s mantle as athletics’ greatest showman.
Bolt always backed up his bravado. He won the 100m-200m double at the Olympics of Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016.
Lyles may be even more of an extrovert than Bolt, and his antics before the start may be wilder and he may talk more than the great Jamaican but he is a long way from inheriting his crown.
He has had a fantastic Games here in Paris. A gold medal in the 100m — the race he calls his mistress — and now a bronze in the 200m — the race he calls his wife — is some performance.
The thing is, whatever your excuse, when you aim for the stars, when you win the 100m and say, ‘Goodness gracious, I’m incredible’, you better live up to it.
‘I’m pretty confident,’ Lyles said ahead of the 200m final. ‘I can’t lie. I’ll be winning. When they come off the turn, they will be depressed.’ When you say that, you better back it up.
Lyles couldn’t do it. He is a brilliant athlete but he is not a phenomenon, as Bolt was. The same goes for Jakob Ingebrigtsen. A superstar but way too fallible to be remembered as the greatest of all time.
As Tebogo celebrated becoming the first-ever African winner of the men’s 200m at the Olympic Games, Lyles lay flat on his back yards from the line, gasping for air.
Lyles may be even more of an extrovert than Usain Bolt but he is a long way from inheriting his crown
Lyles couldn’t do it. He is a brilliant athlete but he is not a phenomenon, as Bolt was. The same goes for Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Rumours soon began to circulate that USA Track and Field had said Lyles was suffering from Covid and teammate Bednarek said he had heard his compatriot had ‘some sickness going on’
The man that one publication christened The Big Noise was quiet now and struggled to rise to his feet. Eventually, he hauled himself on to one knee and stayed like that for some time.
He began to try to walk back towards the athletes’ tunnel but he could not make it and he collapsed against a wall and asked for help from medics.
Several crowded around him, helped him into a wheelchair and pushed it out of the stadium. A Paris 2024 spokesperson said Lyles had been unable to walk away on his own.
Rumours soon began to circulate that USA Track and Field had said Lyles was suffering from Covid-19 and Bednarek said he had heard his compatriot had ‘some sickness going on’.
After the race, Lyles confirmed he had tested positive for Covid in the early hours of Tuesday morning and had been quarantining at a hotel since and trying to recover.
He said he had recovered a lot of his energy by Thursday but did not want to tell anyone about his illness because he did not want to give his rivals an edge before the race.
‘I’ve had better days,’ Lyles said afterwards, ‘but I am walking around again. I was quite light-headed after that race.
‘The chest pain was definitely active. But after a while I caught my breath and had my wits about me. I feel a lot better now.’
Whatever the reason for his performance, whether it was down to his failings, his illness or to the brilliance of Tebogo, Lyles never got close to his rival.
He might have won the 100m by five-thousandths of a second earlier this week but this time, he could not get within a country mile of Tebogo.
Given he was sick, it might perhaps have been wise to conserve some of his energy instead of sprinting out of the tunnel before the race like a man possessed by furies.
History, after all, was on the line here. Only nine men have ever won the sprint double at an Olympic Games and it is an impressive list. Men like Jesse Owens, Valeriy Borzov, Carl Lewis and, of course, Bolt are on it and Lyles desperately wanted to join them in the pantheon.
After his double at those World Championships in Budapest, he wanted another double here to set the seal on his greatness.
The only double he got was a second bronze to go with the one he claimed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
A second gold of these Games never looked close to happening. Lyles was slow out of the blocks, as so often happens, and he did not once threaten to close the gap to Tebogo.
Only nine men have ever won the sprint double at an Olympic Games and it is an impressive list. Men like Jesse Owens, Valeriy Borzov, Carl Lewis (pictured) and, of course, Bolt are on it
He might have won the 100m by five-thousandths of a second earlier this week but this time, he could not get within a country mile of Tebogo
As the race flattened out after the bend, it became obvious just how much work Lyles had to do to catch the man from Botswana.
He could not close the gap and Tebogo flew over the line, carried by shoes that bore his mother’s date of birth.
‘It’s basically me carrying her through every stride that I take inside the field,’ the new champion said. ‘Me, to take her, it gives me a lot of motivation. She’s watching up there, and she’s really, really happy.’
