For the first time since 2004, an American has claimed the gold medal in the men’s 100M spring at the Olympic Summer Games – that American was none other than Noah Lyles, the seemingly superhuman speedy sprinter from Alexandria, Virginia!
How is Alexandria’s Noah Lyles the fastest man in the world?
The winner of the 100M sprint is widely regarded as the ultimate test of short-distance running prowess, and there is no better stage than the Olympic Games to witness who among the world’s best short-distance runners can perform when the pressure is on.
Fortunately for America, Noah Lyles secured the title of ‘fastest man in the world’ along with its accompanying Olympic gold medal for coming in first place.
Lyles won this race by literal fractions of a second – beating out the second-place runner, Kishane Thompson, by just 0.005 seconds!
Not just first, but the fastest too!
With a relatively poor start, Lyle was the slowest runner to reach the 10M mark of the race, in fact, at the 40M mark he was actually in last place!
He managed to swing from being in last place by reaching the fastest pace of the event of 43.6 km/h, roughly 27.09 mph, at the 60M mark!
After hitting the highest top speed in the race, Lyles closed the gap with his competitors and narrowly won first place by stretching and leaning his torso forward, which is the part of your body that these races use to determine when you’ve crossed the finish line.
Why was this race such a big deal?
According to fellow Olympians and analysts, this was one of the best Men’s 100M races ever in the sport’s history!
All eight runners eclipsed the 10-second mark, with the last-place runner this year finishing the race in 9.91 seconds – a time that would have been good enough for fourth place in the 2020 Tokyo Games.
With Noah Lyle’s winning time of 9.79 seconds, the margin for error in this dramatic race was so tight that the difference between first and last was only 0.12 seconds!
What other races does Noah Lyles have left?
Noah Lyles will also be competing in the Men’s 200M sprint (August 8th) as well as the 4 x 100M relay (August 9th).
This will give the DMV area native an opportunity to bring home not just one or two gold medals, but three!