Paris Olympics 2024: How Noah Lyles Overtook Kishane Thompson To Win Men's 100m Gold Despite Both Clocking 9.79 Seconds

PARIS: World champion Noah Lyles raced to victory in 9.79 second to clinch gold in a dramatic men's 100m final of the Paris Olympics 2024 on Sunday.

Lyles finished in first position just by a whisker, making it the closest Olympic 100m finish in modern history as just five thousandths of a second separated him from Jamaica's Kishane Thompson.

The rounded-up time of both the athletes were clocked at 9.79 sec but the American scored the decisive (.784) as opposed to Thompson's (.789.), thereby winning it in the tiniest of margins.

By doing so, Lyles became the first American athlete, male or female, to claim Olympic glory since Justin Gatlin won the gold medal in the 2004 Athens Games.

"It's the one I wanted," said Lyles, whose winning time was a personal best. "It's the hard battle, it's the amazing opponents.

"Everybody's healthy, everybody came prepared for the fight and I wanted to prove that I'm the man amongst all of them. I'm the wolf amongst wolves."

A photo-finish confirmed Lyles' victory.

"I went up to Kishane and I was like, 'I'm going to be honest, bro, I think you had that one,'' the American said while reflecting on the nervy wait for the final results.

"And I was fully prepared to see his name pop up and to see my name pop up, I'm like goodness gracious. I'm incredible."

Lyles described this incredible experience as a roller-coaster of a ride, full of ups and downs.

"I'm usually a guy who likes to come out blazing in all my rounds, especially in the 200m. But the 100m, it's my first time here on the Olympic stage."

The relatively unknown Thompson, the fastest man this year with a best of 9.77sec, said he hadn't been "fresh enough" over the final 30 metres.

"I couldn't really see Lyles, I wasn't sure," 23-year-old Thompson said of the photo-finish. "It was that close.

"I'm going to take it and move forward from here," he said. "Everybody loves a winner so I would have loved to win today, but I loved the competition overall."

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