After dominating the world championships last year, Noah Lyles finally has his Olympic gold medal.
After talking the talk for quite some time, the Gainesville, Fla. native is now walking the walk, as he won the men’s 100-meter final on Sunday in Paris.
Lyles crossed the finish line in 9.79784 seconds, a personal best, and winning by five-thousandths of a second (it will officially go in the books as a 9.80).
A long photo finish review was necessary to officially crown Lyles champion, as he looked on intently alongside Jamaican Kishane Thompson, whom the broadcast thought won with the naked eye.
When the result was official, he had seven words:
“America, I told you, I got next!”
Lyles then draped an American flag around his shoulders to take a well-deserved, very long victory lap – American Fred Kerley got the bronze with 9.81.
Lyles is the first American to win the event at the Olympics since Justin Gatlin did so in 2004. It’s the fifth gold medal won by Americans on Sunday (golfer Scottie Scheffler, cyclist Kristen Faulkner, swimmer Bobby Finke, and the women’s 4×100 medley relay team).
The 27-year-old ran a 9.83 in the semifinal, automatically qualifying by finishing second in that race. He caught some flack on Saturday for finishing in second place in a heat, saying that his “plan” was to finish in first from there on out. That didn’t happen – but it’ll all be forgotten about now, as he finished first when it mattered most.
Of course, some will argue he brought the hate upon himself when he quipped that NBA champions do not have the right to call themselves world champions. That comment alone has caused him to be hated by American sports fans just as much, maybe more, than he is loved by them. But, perhaps this victory can change the tide.
Lyles will now turn his focus on the 200m (he’s said his “dream goal” is to break Usain Bolt’s world record of 19.19) and the 4x100m relay. It remains up in the air about whether he will be part of the 4x400m relay, but he was a part of the silver-medal winning team at this year’s world indoor championships.
In an interview with Fox News Digital back in March, Lyles said a friend told him, “‘Forget three, you need to go after four. Do something no one’s ever done.'”
“When you want to talk about being the greatest, that’s what you have to achieve. So, I announced that that is a goal of mine to complete; why not do it on the biggest stage, the Olympics?” Lyles said of a potential fourth Olympic event.
Track legend Carl Lewis recently told Fox News Digital that the sport “needs” Lyles to dominate these games.
“I think the sport needs someone like him that’s a champion. He’s the defending champion, the fastest man in the world right now, and we need someone to grab onto. I think he’s the perfect guy to do that, and I’m excited about that,” Lewis told Fox News Digital in a recent interview.
“I think track does better when we do have a superstar. That’s why I think if Noah were to win, he would elevate the sport as well. As opposed to saying ‘I wonder who’s going to win,’ people want to say ‘I want him’ or ‘I don’t want him.’ They want to root for someone, or root against someone. I think it creates more intensity when you have someone that dominates, and that’s been throughout history. . . . People have really gravitated to the sport when people really dominated more.”
