Noah Lyles (© Jay Bendlin / WCH Oregon22)
A little more than an hour before the men’s 200m final at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the 1968 Olympic gold and bronze medalists, respectively, from the United States, were asked what they thought of the current crop of American 200m runners.
Carlos said he thought Noah Lyles, the defending champion from Doha, Qatar, in 2019 would need the race of his life to beat Erriyon Knighton, the teenage sensation who ran 19.49 seconds earlier this year and has been drawing comparisons to Usain Bolt.
Lyles got the message.
Lyles burst out of the blocks, ran a dynamic turn, and blazed down the homestretch with the partisan Hayward Field crowd roaring its approval. When he hit the finish line, the reader board said 19.32 seconds.
The official time updated to 19.31 seconds, giving Lyles the American record and breaking the mark of 19.32 Michael Johnson set en route to breaking his own world record in the final of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Lyles’ personal best entering the race was 19.50 seconds.
“I was really thankful to break somebody as great as his record,” Lyles said. “My brother (Josephus) told me that I ran 10.15 around the curve. That’s definitely the start of my life, and it’s only going to get faster.”
Lyles led a 1-2-3 American sweep as Kenny Bednarek, the silver medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, took silver again, this time in 19.77 seconds with Knighton, fourth in the Olympic final, third this time in 19.80 seconds.
“I’m happy for him,” Knighton said of Lyles’ American record. “Everybody put in the work to be great, and that’s what he did.”
Lyles is normally a slow starter and overpowers his competitors in the homestretch. When he got out of the blocks so quickly on Thursday and came off the curve in front, the rest of the field had no chance.
“I was telling (Knighton), and Kenny I was glad y’all was behind me because you put the fear of God into my start,” said Lyles, who added he knew he would win “when I didn’t feel Erriyon coming off the turn. After that, I was like, ‘OK, I’m racing myself, let’s go.’ Which was my goal. But I also have in the back of my mind, in case he did try to pull up on me, I was going to be ready for it.”
Lyles’ 0.46-second margin of victory was stunning for a 200m race, especially against the field he faced.
“I didn’t know who got second,” Lyles said. “And that’s about it. I literally did not know. I still only know that Kenny and Erriyon got behind me, and I didn’t know that Erriyon got third until we all walked up on the podium. So that’s how big the gap was.”
Not only were Smith and Carlos sitting trackside to see Lyles break Johnson’s record, Johnson was, too, as he’s doing color commentary on WCH Oregon22 for BBC, the major British television broadcasting network. Lyles said Johnson congratulated him and called him a “fierce competitor.”
The win capped a comeback season for Lyles, who entered the Tokyo Olympics as a big favorite for gold, but won the bronze medal. He was quite open on his struggles with mental health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and said that he feels like he has a new lease on life this season.
“Every time I got on the track this year, I knew I wasn’t that same person anymore,” Lyles said. “It was like I found my juice, my groove, I was enjoying track and field. I was happy every day to be running.”
Knighton became the youngest person to medal in the men’s 200m. He turned 18 in January, has already turned pro, and graduated from high school just a few days before coming to the Prefontaine Classic where he ran the 100m.
“Overall, it feels good to become the youngest medalist,” Knighton said. “There’s more to do in the future. At the end of the day, I’m just happy to be on the podium. It just feels good to do it in front of the home crowd.”
Bednarek, who broke a toe in a home improvement accident in December and missed seven weeks of training, was surprised how fast the three Americans ran.
“I didn’t even know how fast we were running,” Bednarek said. “As soon as the gun went off, my mind went blank and when I got around the turn, I messed up and kind of lost my momentum. So, I just had to make sure not to lose too much and get on the podium and I got it done.”
The sweep of the medals by the U.S. in the 200m was only the second time one country took all of the men’s 200m medals in a World Athletics Championships. The U.S. also swept the 200m medals in 2005 with Justin Gatlin winning gold, Wallace Spearmon taking the silver and John Capel, the 2003 world champion, winning bronze.
“It’s just a testament to all of us,” Bednarek said. “We all work hard, and we just showed the world we’re here and we’re not going to take any crap from the rest of them. Every single year we’re dealing with a lot of injuries and fight through it and come back and get it done. We’re doing what we need to do and made a statement to everybody.”
The U.S. has been making several of those statements in the first World Athletics Championships on U.S. soil. On Saturday, the U.S. swept the men’s 100m medals, the third time the U.S. had done so, and the first time since 1991. On Sunday, the U.S. swept the men’s shot put medals, the first time any country had done that.
“This has been the year,” Lyles said. “You’re like, yeah, America is going to do well, but America is like scooping up medals left and right, and I think we’ve only taken pairs of medals. I don’t think there’s too many events where we only grabbed one medal, and gosh darn it, this feels great because I’ve been waiting for American to come out and dominate.”
By Ashley Conklin
