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Noah Lyles revealed his first thought when he won the highly coveted 100m gold medal was simply “I’m incredible”.
In the build up to Paris 2024, Lyles talked about breaking the world record, but instead, he had to settle for winning the title by just five-thousandths of a second, beating Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson in a photo finish.
Lyles looked out of the race until the final 10 metres when he came out of the pack to challenge Thompson, who had led for 99m of the race.
After the photo finish Lyles was off in celebration, taking the number off his chest and doing a lap of honour at the Stade de France will a flag draped over his shoulders.
“It’s the one I wanted, it’s the hard battle, the amazing opponents, everybody was healthy and came to fight,” Lyles said after the race.
“I’m the wolf among wolves. I’ll be honest, I went to Kishane, I said, ‘I’ll be honest, I think you had that one’.
“I was prepared to see his name pop up. I saw my name pop up and I said, goodness gracious, I’m incredible."
He added: “I’m still moving forward and moving forward, when the time came and I was saying: this is the final and I’m going to need to go out there and do it.
“I wasn’t ready to see it (my name pop up) I’m going to be honest that’s the first time that I wasn’t ready to see it, he was quite a few lanes down so it was quite hard for me to picture where we were, but I guess that was a good thing.”
Lyles’ Olympics is not over with just the one title however, and he will be competing in the 200m, but when asked what it means to be the fastest, he said: "What’s the title of Olympic champion? [The fastest man on the planet?] Amen"
Thompson had been hailed as the successor to Usain Bolt and went into the race with Jamaica’s expectations on his shoulders.
He said afterwards: “I’m super grateful, I came out here and finished in the top three. With my past with injuries I’m super grateful.
“I’m a bit disappointed but happy at the same time, I’ve just got to take it as what it is and move on from here.”
