Sixty meters into the Olympic men’s 100 meters final in Paris and Noah Lyles comes third. He is three-hundredths of a second behind his compatriot Fred Kerley and the Jamaican Kishane Thompson.
Yet – and this may sound bizarre – that is exactly where he needs to be.
Lyles has an unparalleled top speed. He wins like Usain Bolt used to, opening his stride (to a ridiculous 2.5 metres) and eating up ground on others before sailing past. He maintains his form as they struggle and slow down.
The headline is Lyles winning by five-thousandths of a second in the closest Olympic men’s 100m final ever – and the toughest to qualify for. Lyles (9.78 sec) ran the fastest time in an Olympic 100m final since Bolt’s Olympic record (9.63) in London in 2012.
Over those last 40 meters, Lyles can close everyone down. He did it in 2023 to win the World Championships and again in trials to reach Paris.
The final frontier for him to become an Olympic champion was the beginning… so here’s the story of how a 75-year-old and a stickman helped Lyles get an edge.
“Your reaction times suck,” says Ralph Mann.
It’s July 2023 and the former Olympian – he won silver in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1972 Munich Olympics – with a PhD in biomechanics, is helping coach Lyles with his block starts.
At Lyles’ training base in Clermont, Florida, Mann, now 75, has set up a marquee along the side of the track. There are a series of cameras pointed at the blocks and a laptop running software that will extract the final percentage from Lyles’ starts.
Lyles at the start of the semi-final in Paris (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Over the past 40 years, Mann has watched and collected more than 500 of the best athletes. “We know what it takes to be an elite starter,” he says. Mann has written a 300-page textbook on the mechanics of sprinting and hurdling. What he doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.
Mann applied that knowledge and decades of experience to software, created in 1999, that generates a stickman that overlays the sprinter’s video in the blocks. Adjusted for body size and weight (according to Lyles), it shows where the limbs should be as the sprinter sets the blocks and jumps out. If you’ve ever played a Mario Kart ghost race, that’s it, just applied to sprinting.
They can see how Lyles moves frame by frame compared to the most effective/efficient method, and it becomes a coaching tool for the session with real-time feedback.
Lyles’ problems were that his hips were too far back when he sat down and his foot movement was poor on the first few steps. Compared to the stickman, Lyles was not compact enough in the drive phase (as the athletes get up to speed), his feet rose too high between steps, and his contact time (how long the feet are on the ground) was too long. The ankles were also not stiff enough.
In short: there was plenty of room for improvement.
It meant that steps four through seven, which are all about increasing range after getting out of the first three, would fall short compared to better starters. Mann explains to Lyles that the only way he can get faster is to shorten the time between steps and keep contact time minimal. White tape was placed horizontally across the track to give Lyles a visual representation of where he should land on specific steps (three and seven).
Lyles knows how the model works. When he asks Mann what he set it on, he replies, “What we need to make you famous.” Lyles talks about doing what the model says works, in terms of its form, rather than what feels right. He has completely bought in.
He is loud and, to some, bordering on arrogance, but Lyles shows vulnerability towards Mann.
“Let’s see how your precious model beats me,” he says, imploring Mann to put the model on a better level than Lyles’ absolute best. “Let it run away, let me be embarrassed,” Lyles says. At one point, Mann stands over Lyles in the blocks and physically moves his hips forward into the set position. Lyles, half joking, half serious, says he feels like he’s not even in the blocks.
There were green shoots of this that worked in February.
After losing six previous times, Lyles finally defeated Christian Coleman over 60 meters indoors. Coleman (6.34 sec) is the world record holder, but Lyles beat him by a hundredth to take the US indoor title in 6.43. Coleman got out quicker, quicker with his foot turnover and got to his second step first, but Lyles was in contention enough (sixth at half-way, 30 yards) to close hard and get on the line – you’ll see a theme developing.
For a guy who couldn’t break 6.5 seconds in 2023, that was huge. Coleman then defeated Lyles at the World Indoors in Glasgow in March, but Lyles ran 6.47 in the semi-final and 6.44 in the final.
Fast forward to Paris.
Mann was right: Lyles’ reaction times suck anyway, by Olympic standards. He was the slowest to react in the final (178 milliseconds, with Letsile Tebogo), 26th out of 27 among the semi-finalists (167 ms) and 46 out of 70 men in the heats, who did not have a false start, reacted faster (161 ms). .
That’s one of the hardest parts to train. No one wants to make a false start at the Olympics and the 80,000-capacity Stade de France is loud. It didn’t help that Lyles reacted slower than others, but it wouldn’t be the difference between gold and silver.
Lyles, in lane seven because he finished third in his semifinal, takes his second and third steps ahead of Thompson in lane three. It shows a lot of foot turnover as he was the last one out.
His form and mechanics are good, even if he doesn’t accelerate through the riding phase as quickly as the Jamaican or Tokyo 2020 100m champion Marcell Jacobs. Lyles was last to 40 yards, but moved at the same speed as Thompson at 30 yards.
The 60m split is the one that matters: 6.44. Lyles is suddenly third and has risen four places from the 50m mark, passing Jacobs (lane nine), Akani Simbine (lane five), Tobogo and Oblique Seville. The last two are located outside and inside Lyles, respectively.
8 frames, 1 iconic 100m final 🖼️#Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/0Q6ItW3e4j
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) August 4, 2024
“I was lucky to have Sevilla next to me because all year long he hit that gear that I didn’t hit,” Lyles said. “I wasn’t going to let him go.”
But as Mann once said, “Noah’s biggest competition is Noah.” His time difference of 60 meters in the final was only one hundredth away from what he achieved during the US Indoors. At the Paris Diamond League in June 2023, Lyles won in 9.97 and cleared 60 meters in 6.55. He saved one of his best starts ever for the final.
Thompson and Fred Kerley covered the 60 meters in 6.41 seconds, but both had already reached their final speed and slowed down. Lyles peaked a little later than the pair and held his form longer, slower to decelerate.
Lyles’ extra stride length is correct. Over the entire race, Lyles (44) took one step less than Thompson (45). The Jamaican may be able to dwarf Lyles in arm or leg size, but strong arms can only pull an athlete to the line so far. There is no substitute for good mechanics.
Lyles was last in 40 meters, 7th at the halfway point…
His closeness and retention of speed is great.
You can see the slight difference in the last two 10 meter splits. He ran .84 and .86 versus Thompson’s .85 and .87
What a breed. What a ending. pic.twitter.com/fpBAE06QJL
— Steve Magness (@stevemagness) August 4, 2024
Lyles closed the final 40 meters in 3.35 seconds, the fastest of the race. Thompson finished in 3.38. Five others, excluding Simbine who finished hard in fourth place, covered the final 40 meters in 3.4 seconds or slower. “I wasn’t patient enough with my speed; I should have let that take me to the line,” Thompson said.
In his book – it’s actually a textbook – Mann names a series of athletes as the best in certain categories. There are the most talented, the most professional, the most driven and the best representatives of the sport, but he considers Lyles to be one of his favorites.
After the gold in the 100 meters in Paris and a legitimate chance to do the double in the 200 meters, Lyles should also put Mann among his favorites.
“Ralph Mann said, before I left for Paris, that this is how close the first and second will be from each other,” Lyles said, bringing his index finger and thumb close together to make a gesture of a few centimeters. “I can’t believe how right he was.”
GO DEEPER
Noah Lyles’ mouth wrote the check. On the Olympic podium, his feet cashed in
(Top photo: Andy Cheung/Getty Images)