Noah Lyles will have kept his promise. This Sunday, August 20, the 26-year-old American won the 100m final of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest. To win his first gold medal of these Worlds, the American equaled the best world performance of the year in 9.83 (zero wind). He beat the Batswana Letsile Tebogo (9.88) and the Briton Zharnel Hughes (9.88) to claim the fourth straight U.S. title over the distance, with four different athletes (Justin Gatlin, Christian Coleman, Fred Kerley).
Impeccably braided, nails painted for the occasion, this manga devourer applied his preferred race pattern over 100m: a less bloody start than his competitors, but a superb terminal speed.
He now has the 200m in his sights to try to achieve a historic and unprecedented double since Usain Bolt in 2015. He is the big favorite, he who is twice defending champion and third performer of all time, in 19.31 in 2022. He has an appointment from Wednesday to Friday and has already announced the color: he aims to beat the world record set by Usain Bolt in 2009: 19″19. He will then compete in the 4x100m relay at the end of the week.
This new title is a real victory for him. As a child, he was regularly in hospital to treat his asthma, before being relieved by tonsil and adenoid surgery at the age of six. Dyslexic and a victim of attention disorders, he had trouble at school where he repeated his “first grade”, the equivalent of the preparatory course. “I’ve been fighting all my life. After I was born to get out of the hospital, then to get out of school, with my dyslexia and my attention disorders, to find my own way. Now I fight on the track,” he said.
A nugget of world sprinting, the Batswana Letsile Tebogo, capable of shining from 100 to 400 m, became at the age of 20 the first African to climb on the world podium in the straight line.
Behind him, the Briton Zharnel Hughes, originally from Anguilla and living in Jamaica, finally realized his potential and offered a men’s 100m medal to Great Britain, which had been waiting for it for 20 years (bronze from Darren Campbell in 2003).
Earlier in the day, Frenchman Yann Schrub, a bronze medalist at the European Championships last summer, could not do better than ninth in the 10,000m. He finished in 28’07″42, sixteen seconds behind Joshua Cheptegei, winner of the event.
The Ugandan wins his third consecutive world championship title. He thus extends his dynasty as the Briton Mo Farah had done (between 2013 and 2017). Ethiopians Haile Gebrselassie (between 1993 and 1999) and Kenenisa Bekele (between 2003 and 2009) had won four gold medals in a row. Joshua Cheptegei, also an Olympic 5000m champion, will contest his first marathon in December in Valencia, Spain. He plans to focus on the 42.195 km after the Paris Olympics in 2024.
In the heptathlon, Frenchwoman Auriana Lazraq-Khlass (24) took 12th place with 6,179 points (her record). His compatriots Léonie Cambours is 15th (5,939) and Esther Turpin 18th (5,256), due to a zero at the length.
The competition was won by Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who clinched a second world championship title, resisting a furious 800m from American Anna Hall, in silver. 30-year-old “KJT” has 6,740 points, only 20 more than Hall. Dutchman Anouk Vetter took bronze with 6,501 points.