Sixty metres into the men’s 100-metre Olympic final in Paris and Noah Lyles is third. He is three-hundredths of a second down on his compatriot Fred Kerley and Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
Yet — and this may sound bizarre — that is exactly where he needs to be.
Lyles has unmatched top-end speed. He wins as Usain Bolt used to, opening up his stride (to a ridiculous 2.5m) and eating up ground on others before cruising past. He holds form while they struggle and decelerate.
The headline is Lyles winning by five-thousandths of a second in the closest men’s 100m Olympic final ever — and the hardest for which to qualify. Lyles (9.78sec) ran the fastest time in an Olympic 100m final since Bolt’s Olympic record (9.63) in London back in 2012.
Over that final 40m, Lyles can close anyone. He did it in 2023 to win the World Championships and again in trials to reach Paris.
The final frontier for him to become Olympic champion was the start… so here’s the story of how a 75-year-old and a stickman helped give Lyles the edge.
“Your reaction times suck,” says Ralph Mann.
It is July 2023 and the former Olympian — he won 400m hurdles silver at the 1972 Munich Olympics — who holds a PhD in biomechanics, is helping coach Lyles on his block starts.
At Lyles’ training base in Clermont, Florida, Mann, now 75, has a marquee set up by the side of the track. There are a series of cameras pointed at the blocks and a laptop running software that is going to eke the final per cent out of Lyles’ starts.
Lyles at the start of the semi-final in Paris (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Over the last 40 years, Mann has watched and collected data on 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 has applied that knowledge and decades of experience into a software, created in 1999, that generates a stickman that overlays the video of the sprinter in the blocks. Adjusted for body size and weight (to Lyles), it shows where the limbs should be as the sprinter sets and springs out the blocks. If you’ve ever played a Mario Kart ghost race, it’s that, just applied to sprinting.
They can go frame-by-frame to see how Lyles moves 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 set and his foot turnover 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 were coming up too high between steps and his contact time (how long the feet are on the floor) was too long. The ankles weren’t rigid enough, either.
In short, there was plenty to improve.
It meant that steps four to seven, which are all about extending range after getting out with the first three, would come up short compared to better starters. Mann explains to Lyles that the only way he can get faster is by reducing the time between steps and keeping contact time minimal. White tape was put horizontally across the track to give Lyles a visual representation of where he should be landing at specific steps (three and seven).
Lyles knows how the model works. When he asks Mann what he has set it at, he replies, “What we need to make you famous.” Lyles speaks about doing what works according to the model, in terms of his form, rather than what feels good. He has fully bought in.
He is loud and, to some, borderline arrogant, but Lyles shows vulnerability with Mann.
“Let’s see your precious model beat me,” he says, imploring Mann to set the model at better than Lyles’ absolute best. “Let it run away, let me get embarrassed,” says Lyles. At one stage, Mann stands over Lyles in the blocks and physically moves his hips forward in the set position. Lyles, half-joking, half-serious, says he feels like he isn’t even in the blocks.
There were green shoots of this working in February.
After losing six previous times, Lyles finally beat Christian Coleman over 60m indoors. Coleman (6.34sec) is the world record holder, but Lyles edged him out by one hundredth to take the U.S. indoors title in 6.43. Coleman got out faster, quicker with his foot turnover and was first to reach his second step, but Lyles was in contention enough (sixth at halfway, 30m) to close hard and took it on the line — you’ll see a theme developing.
For a guy who could not break 6.5sec in 2023, it was huge. Coleman then beat 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 do suck, by Olympic standards anyway. He was the joint-slowest to react in the final (178milliseconds, with Letsile Tebogo), 26th of 27 among semi-finalists (167ms) and 46 of the 70 men in the heats, who did not false start, reacted quicker (161ms).
That is one of the hardest parts to train. Nobody wants to false start in the Olympics and the 80,000-capacity Stade de France is loud. Lyles responding slower than others did not help, but it would not be the difference between gold and silver.
Lyles, in lane seven because he finished third in his semi-final, takes his second and third steps before Thompson in lane three. It shows great foot turnover given he was the last to get out.
His form and mechanics are good, even if he doesn’t accelerate as quickly through the drive phase as the Jamaican, or Tokyo 2020 100m champion Marcell Jacobs. Lyles was last up until 40m, but by 30m was moving at the same speed as Thompson.
The 60m split is the one that matters: 6.44. Lyles is suddenly third, having jumped four places from the 50m mark, going past Jacobs (lane nine), Akani Simbine (lane five), Tobogo and Oblique Seville. The latter two are outside and inside Lyles respectively.
8 frames, 1 iconic 100m final 🖼️#Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/0Q6ItW3e4j
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) August 4, 2024
“I was fortunate to have Seville next to me because, all throughout the year, he’s been hitting that acceleration that I wasn’t hitting,” said Lyles. “I wasn’t going to let him go.”
Though, as Mann once said: “Noah’s biggest competition is Noah.” His 60m split in the final was only one hundredth off what he managed at the U.S. Indoors. At the Paris Diamond League in June 2023, Lyles won in 9.97, going through 60m in 6.55. He saved one of his best starts ever for the final.
Thompson and Fred Kerley went through 60m in 6.41sec, but both had already well hit terminal velocity and were slowing. Lyles peaked slightly later than the pair and held form for longer, slower to decelerate.
Lyles’ extra stride length adds up. Across the full race, Lyles (44) took one fewer step than Thompson (45). The Jamaican might dwarf Lyles for arm or leg size, but strong arms can only pull an athlete to the line a certain amount. There is no replacement for good mechanics.
Lyles was in last at 40 meters, 7th at halfway…
His close & holding on to speed is amazing.
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 race. What a close. pic.twitter.com/fpBAE06QJL
— Steve Magness (@stevemagness) August 4, 2024
Lyles closed the last 40m in 3.35sec, the fastest in the race. Thompson closed in 3.38. Five others, barring Simbine who finished hard in fourth, covered the last 40m in 3.4sec or slower. “I wasn’t patient enough with my speed — I should have let it bring me to the line,” said Thompson.
In his book — it’s a textbook, really — Mann lists a series of athletes as the best in certain categories. There are the most talented, the most professional, most driven and best representatives of the sport, but he puts Lyles as one of his favourites.
After 100m gold in Paris, and a legitimate shot at doing the double with the 200m, Lyles ought to put Mann in his favourites too.
“Ralph Mann, before I left for Paris, said this is how close first and second is going to be away from each other,” said Lyles, bringing his index finger and thumb close together to gesture an inch. “I can’t believe how right he was.”
GO DEEPER
Noah Lyles’ mouth wrote the check. On the Olympics stage, his feet cashed it
(Top photo: Andy Cheung/Getty Images)