A stunning pre-race light show and dramatic music at the Stade de France set the stage for an electrifying atmosphere, but even these spectacular elements couldn’t fully capture the intensity of what happened in the next 10 seconds.
Noah Lyles, celebrating his first Olympic victory, was met with astonishment as the race unfolded into one of the most extraordinary 100m finals in Olympic history.
Lyles clinched the gold with a time of 9.79 seconds, narrowly edging out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by just five-thousandths of a second in a thrilling photo finish.
The entire field was incredibly close, with all eight finalists finishing within 0.12 seconds of each other. The slowest runner, Jamaican Oblique Seville, crossed the line in 9.91 seconds—good enough for fourth place at the Tokyo Games.
This race set a historic record, as it marked the first time all eight competitors finished under 10 seconds in a wind-legal race, making it the fastest 100m final ever. Four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson described it as “absolutely” the greatest 100m final he has ever witnessed, “bar none.”
“The final lived up to the hype. Going through the rounds it looked like a foregone conclusion that Kishane Thompson would win as he was the one who came in as the fastest man in the world,” Johnson said on BBC TV.
“We had this amazing race where you could throw a blanket over the finishing line.
“We didn’t even know who won for a few minutes.”
Not until the big screen inside the stadium displayed the official results, after an agonising wait, did anybody truly know Lyles – thanks to a sensational surge and torso dip at the line – had taken gold.
It was not until the very last metres on the eye-catching purple track that he was even in contention.
Lyles tied with Letsile Tebogo for the slowest reaction time of anyone in the field, a time of 0.178 notably down on Fred Kerley’s lightning 0.108.