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British sprinter Zharnel Hughes is convinced the best way to silence outspoken American rival and Netflix co-star Noah Lyles is to do his own talking on the track.
Lyles, with his unabashed ambition to become the face of the sport and no-filter approach to dissecting the competition, could be considered either unappealingly audacious or exactly what athletics needs to claw back waning popularity, particularly among younger audiences.
Hughes, 29, seems content to have conceded the screen time competition to the reigning 100m and 200m world champion in the recently-released documentary Sprint, but the Olympic cauldron is a different story.
“I didn’t really know he said that much about me until I saw the preview and I realise he said a lot,” said Hughes.
“I was like, ‘this guy can talk!’ I knew he talked, but I didn’t know he talked that much. Obviously me being a competitor, it raised all the red in me. I was like, ‘this guy, man! Shut up.’
“My girlfriend said ‘don’t try to let it get to your head. He’s saying these things so you guys can be thrown off psychologically’. So for me I use that desire, that red in me, and I try to put it out on the track.
“I’m looking forward to actually sitting down and hearing all the things that he had to say. It’s the perfect timing, really, leading up to the Olympic Games, and then I’ll see him in London and we’ll have a talk.
“He just has a loose mouth, but I guess that’s how he gets his confidence. At the end of the day he’s performing as well, so I have to give him credit.”
Lyles and Hughes are both scheduled to participate in the 100m men’s grand finale of Saturday’s London Diamond League meeting, the Briton’s first since recovering from the hamstring injury that kept him out of both the European championships in June and the British Olympic trials.
A medical exemption allowed the world 100m bronze medallist to be selected to Team GB for the 100m and 200m in Paris, where he is also all-but certain to take part in the 4x100m relay.
The Olympic gods were not smiling on Hughes three years ago in Tokyo, where he blamed a cramp for the false start that got him disqualified from a 100m race nine-time Olympic gold medallist Carl Lewis has since claimed Hughes would have won.
Anguilla-born Hughes was also part of the men’s 4×100 relay team that finished second in Japan but saw their medals later stripped away after team-mate CJ Ujah was punished for a doping violation.
Hughes has since become Britain’s fastest man, last summer waking up from a dream to predict the exact time – 9.83s – it took him to break Linford Christie’s 30-year-old 100m record.
A month later, he jotted down a time of 19.73 before clocking it precisely to go under John Regis’ own 1993 British 200m mark.
Hughes’ phone screensaver, a manifestation collage, prominently features a picture of the man he has grown close to in the process of usurping, though Christie maintains the advantage on Olympic golds, having won the 100m title in 1992.
He said: “Linford and I have a very good relationship. His videos are ones I look back on a lot.
“I saw that support that he got when he crossed the finish line (in 1992) and the celebration that he did, and the reaction from the crowd was just mind-boggling.
“When he stood up on the podium, it inspired me. It gave me the chills. I got goosebumps, and I was like, ‘man, if I can do something like this, that would be exceptional for me.
“I thought I was in a great position to deliver [in Tokyo], but recently I’ve read this saying, ‘you may have been delayed, but you’re not denied’.
“I believe in that. When it’s my time, it’s my time.”
Zharnel Hughes is an ambassador for Vita Coco.
