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Noah Lyles won the 200m US Olympic trials for Paris Games largely because of the quality of competition with Christian Coleman and Kenny Bednarek pushing the 27-year-old to bring his A-game.
Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles has revealed how competing against familiar foes was catalytic to him breaking the 200m record that lasted for 28 years ahead of the Paris Olympics.
The six-time world champion won the 100 and 200-meter sprint events at the US Olympic trials and coming up against compatriots Kenny Bednarek, Kyree King and Christian Coleman enabled Usain Bolt to bring his A-game to the trials.
"Seeing Kenny, seeing Christian, seeing Erriyon (Knighton), even seeing Kyree (Coleman) — I love this. People said, ‘Nah, I’m not going to back down because he’s fast. I’m gonna get up because he’s fast," Lyles told TalkSport.
He added: "That’s the energy I love to see and those are the races that I want to keep having." Michael Johnson's time of 19.66 seconds had not been surpassed in Olympic trials since 1996.
Lyles broke the mark twice - first carding 19.6 seconds in the semi-finals before strong winds invalidated the time. The best was yet to come as the speedster clocked 19.53 seconds in the final, finishing 0.6 seconds ahead of Kenny Bednarek.
"It showed me that people were willing to get up. Sometimes you feel that you’ll walk into a room and people are just scared to get up for it when it comes to 200m," Lyles, who bagged 200m bronze in Paris, observed.
Lyles is the current US record holder in the 200m with a blistering 19.31-second run at the World Championships in Oregon in 200m. The 27-year-old is some way short of matching Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt's outlandish 19.19-second mark from 2009.
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