The world’s fastest man is still the world’s fastest man.
Team USA’s Noah Lyles, the defending world champion in the 100 m, won the Olympic gold medal in that race on Sunday night at Stade de France, becoming the first male sprinter from the United States to earn a 100-m Olympic title in two decades. Lyles ran the race in 9.784 seconds; Kishane Thompson of Jamaica won silver with a time of 9.789 seconds, while the U.S.’s Fred Kerley won bronze, in 9.81 seconds.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Lyles, also the three-time defending 200-m world champion, backed up brash predictions of sprint domination. He has historically enjoyed more success in the 200; Lyles finished seventh at the U.S. Olympic trials in the 100 m in 2021, failing to make the American team.
Read More: Noah Lyles Brings His Speed and Sizzle To The Olympics
“I’m here to race anybody who wants it,” he declared to TIME before the Olympics. “The deeper the field, the better I run. I know I’m going to win. Because I’m never going to break nerve.”
The Olympics are now a scene of Lyles’ greatest triumph, rather than his most transformative failure. Lyles struggled to improve his mental health before the Tokyo Olympics, as pandemic isolation darkened the mood of the athlete’s typically extroverted persona. Plus, the murder of George Floyd in 2020 added to his stress. And once he arrived in Tokyo, the lack of electricity in a stadium with no fans also held Lyles back.
But an underperformance in Tokyo, where he finished third in the 200 m, a race where he was the favorite, sparked Lyles to revise his training. Recalling his memories from Tokyo in a meeting with reporters in Paris this week, Lyles said: “This is not fun. This is not cool. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I thought it was going to be like. And that’s literally the last few thoughts I had going into my mind as I got into the blocks. And it sucked.”
Lyles, the favorite in the 200 m that year as he had run the world’s fastest time of the year going into Tokyo, finished a disappointing third. He broke down in tears while meeting with reporters afterwards, in detailing his difficult mental-health journey, and guilt that his younger brother Josephus, another elite sprinter, hadn’t made the Olympics with him. (Josephus did not qualify for Paris.)
Coming out of Tokyo, Lyles decided to revamp his training program. In essence, he’d work smarter, not necessarily harder. (Though by all accounts, Lyles still grinds for hours on the track.) Since 2021, Lyles has put on some 10 lb. of muscle, which has allowed him to position his body at more efficient angles in the blocks, and generate more force and higher speeds at the beginning of his races. He’s worked with a biomechanist to improve his start time, long considered his weakness. Winning a silver medal at the 60-m indoor world championships in Glasgow earlier this year gave Lyles confidence that these efforts were paying off.
“There are tons of people out there who claim that I have horrible starts,” said Lyles last week. “But you know, somebody with a horrible start can’t get a silver medal or run 6.43 in the 60.”
Read More: Which Olympic Sport Is Hardest on the Body?
Lyles set out to conquer the 200 m; that final is on Aug. 8, followed by the 4×100 relay the next night. The last male Olympian to sweep those three events was Usain Bolt.
“I get to finally say it, I’m showing up to an Olympic Games not depressed,” Lyles said in Paris. “And it feels amazing. It’s a lot of joy, a lot of joy. And even though there’s hard times in the moment, I can always think back to the last Olympics and be like, “No, this one is, is not the same. This one is way better.’ And I’m ready to show it.”
He showed it. And his very best could still be coming.
