When Noah Lyles took on the NBA with his ‘world-champion-of-what?’ jibe, his argument was that no sport came close to matching the global reach of track and field. Seldom can anyone have been vindicated in less welcome style.
Here in the Stade de France, Lyles was hoist by his own petard, his bid for a 100m-200m double kiboshed by Letsile Tebogo, who ran a blistering 19.46seconds in the latter sprint to win Botswana’s first ever Olympic gold medal.
The African nation was following St Lucia and Dominica in breaking the same duck in the same arena at these Games. On the same night, Pakistan won gold, too, through Arshad Nadeem in the men’s javelin, their first Olympic medal in any sport since 1984.
Ironically, even by the NBA closed view of global supremacy, Lyles would not have been king, countryman Kenny Bednarek taking silver in 19.62. The pre-race favourite, who revealed afterwards he ran despite testing positive for Covid two days ago, managed only 19.70 for third.
The greater upstaging, though, came later, when from ‘world-champion-of-what?’ the question shifted to champion from what world? Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone again proved herself on another planet to the rest, running the fastest 400m hurdles in history for the sixth time in her life to claim her second Olympic gold.
A new world record of 50.37 made a race with the clock out of what should have been one of the head-to-heads of the Games, Dutch star Femke Bol fading badly after trying to match what, even to the second-fastest in history, proved a pace too strong.
Bol lost silver trying to win gold and had to settle for bronze. Anna Cockerell of the US came through for second and became only the fourth woman to break the 52-second barrier, just as her teammate was going more than half-a-second below 51. Ludicrously, McLaughlin-Levrone’s time would have been ninth-fastest in the 400m flat semi-finals the day before.
Before these Games began, there was talk a world record might be on Lyles’s agenda, too, that he might not just emulate Usain Bolt’s doubles of Beijing, London and Rio, but better his 200m best as well.
In truth, the 27-year-old has never really looked in that kind of form, perhaps partly explained by the infection that has now been confirmed.
Before this evening, Lyles had run five races at these Olympics, but won only two. One of those was by just five-thousandths of a second, albeit that which mattered most, as he claimed 100m gold.
The 200m, though, is his event, or at least has been at the World Championships three times in a row. At the Olympics in Tokyo, he had taken bronze, but then gone unbeaten for three years, until finishing second in Thursday’s semi-final, again behind Tebogo.
Usually more into Yu-Gi-Oh! than old fashioned bluff, after that loss, Lyles had kept cards close to chest, skipping media duties as the world wondered whether defeat had been at all by design. But there was no tomfoolery here, only medical precaution.
Lyles did not look a man lacking for vitality as he bounced and roared his way onto the track, the last of the runners to be introduced. Out of the blocks, too, he was explosive, quickly up on the shoulder of Erriyon Knighton. The real danger, though, was wider, in lanes seven and eight, where Bednarek had been moved after complaining that organisers had shown bias in giving Lyles five.
Bednarek, in the white headband, led off the bend but lost the lead within yards to Botswana’s charging force.
One of the nuggets to emerge from the 100m dissection was that it was actually Tebogo who had reached the highest top speed. Then, he had peaked too late to make it count, finishing sixth. Here, it sent him clear.
Which is exactly where McLaughlin-Levrone has spent most of her recent career. This, though, was supposed to be a contest, a first meeting since 2022 with Bol, the only other woman in history to break 51 seconds and the world champion in her absence in Budapest last year.
Their distant rivalry had existed without needle. Bol had never called McLaughlin-Levrone “the American that never shows up”, though outside the States and major championships, she rarely does. McLaughlin-Levrone had never claimed she could win anything blindfolded, though it’s tempting to think she could.
The European record holder had never beaten America’s darling even with eyes open and here went all in to try. They set off stride for stride, for the first time, literally so: until this winter, Bol had taken 15 steps between each hurdle, but dropped to 14 for the first seven to match the formula that had made McLaughlin-Levrone so good.
For 200 metres she kept tabs, then for 200 more paid the price.
Lord Sebastian Coe, the World Athletics chief, has suggested the women’s hurdles should be made taller to challenge McLaughlin-Levrone. You could have have put barbed wire atop them up the home straight, and she’d still have charged through the lot to gold.
