published on July 23, 2024 in Celeb Gist

Olympic track and field trials results: Noah Lyles, Gabby Thomas win 200

EUGENE, Ore. — By the time Noah Lyles coiled into his starting blocks Saturday night at Hayward Field, the other two names on the sprinting marquee had turned in divergent results. Gabby Thomas had celebrated another championship. Sha’Carri Richardson had exited the track in a surprise position, one place off the podium.

Another surprise awaited Lyles in the homestretch of his signature race: Somebody kept pace with him. Lyles frequently turns the final portion of a 200 meters into a coronation. At these U.S. Olympic track and field trials, he needed all of his best-in-the-world speed to fend off highly accomplished, perpetually overlooked Kenny Bednarek.

His closing push allowed him to hold off Bednarek, 19.53 seconds to 19.59, and break Michael Johnson’s meet record (19.66). Bednarek, the Tokyo Olympics silver medalist who also finished second to Lyles in the 100 at these trials, had run a half-lap faster than all but nine men who ever lived. His only problem was that one of them was running two lanes to his left.

“I felt like I was winning,” Bednarek said. “I pretty much just tightened up at the end. That’s pretty much the only reason I got beat. Just make sure nothing tightens up, and I’ll get the win next time. He got the better of me for this race. What matters is just getting him at the Olympics.”

“After we came off the turn, I was like: ‘All right, don’t panic,’” Lyles said. “‘I’ve been here many times before. We’re going to get to the last 80. He’s going to fall, and I’m going to get faster.’ And that’s what happened.”

Typically exuberant if discussing his breakfast order, Lyles walked slowly after crossing the finish line, pausing before he raised his arms and smiled. He hugged long jump champion Tara Davis-Woodhall, knocking her celebratory cowboy hat off her head.

“When it comes to the 200, it’s harder and harder for me to celebrate,” Lyles said. “I’m not trying to take it for granted, because it’s my favorite race. But as the times get faster and faster, sometimes I can even say I take 19.5 for granted.”

Lyles sealed his chance of a triple gold medal attempt — or a quadruple if he can talk his way onto the 4x400 relay — at the Paris Olympics. Richardson could not seize the same opportunity. She finished fourth in the women’s 200 final, upset by a party crasher from Claremont, Calif., by way of the University of Iowa, way out in Lane 9.

Blind to her competitors for the entire race, Brittany Brown stormed into her first Olympics and stole a spot widely assumed to be Richardson’s with the race of her life at 29, a 21.90-second personal best that gave her the silver medal and a ticket to Paris. Brown won silver at the 2019 world championships and made the U.S. 100-meter team at last summer’s worlds. On Saturday, she ran her way into the Olympics.

“I do a lot of visualization,” Brown said. “I feel like I imagined this moment and imagined being here.”

Despite her dominance in the 100, Richardson entered the trials as far from a lock to make the 200 team. The first two rounds, though, changed that perception. She finished in 21.92 and 21.99 seconds, cruising into the finish line both times. After the semifinals, she danced and smiled.

Richardson slowed before the line again in Saturday’s final but only in recognition that she would not make the podium. She finished in 22.16. She patted Thomas on the arm and walked to embrace Brown. Richardson smiled and blew a kiss to her family as she walked off the track. She declined to speak with reporters.

After a suspension for a positive marijuana test cost her an Olympic chance in 2021, Richardson will enter Paris as the favorite in the 100 and a presumptive choice for the 4x100 relay. But she will not have the chance at an individual double gold.

Lyles has not lost a 200 since the Tokyo Olympics final, a streak he stretched to 25 races Saturday. Lyles has not forgotten his last loss. Lyles entered Tokyo after a turbulent year in which he suffered from depression, then came off his anti-depressants because he believed they affected his training. He called the bronze medal he won “boring” before a tearful outpouring of emotion.

Lyles reconciled the turmoil. He came out the other side of his mental health struggle. He won four world championships between 2022 and 2023 and asserted himself as the world’s best sprinter. The bronze medal still stings.

“I don’t feel different about it,” Lyles said earlier in the week. “I don’t like that thing. But I think by not liking it, it gives me the fire to keep going and keep pressing. Every time I turn around I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m doing enough.’ Then I turn around and look at the medal — ‘All right, back to work.’”

Erriyon Knighton, 20, made his second Olympic team three years after he became the youngest American male track and field Olympian since 1964. Knighton competed less than two weeks after an independent arbitrator’s ruling lifted a provisional suspension handed down after he tested positive for trenbolone, an anabolic steroid, on March 26. The arbitrator agreed with Knighton’s argument that he had consumed contaminated meat and had not taken a drug to improve performance.

“In my heart, I never did nothing wrong,” he said. “I’ve always been a good, nice, clean athlete. To be able to run, this being my first meet back out, it’s kind of a relief I made the team.”

Knighton finished third Saturday in 19.77 seconds, 0.12 ahead of hard-luck Christian Coleman, who also finished fourth in the 100.

Thomas won as the favorite in 21.81 seconds, a flip from her underdog starburst three years ago. She won the 2021 trials in 21.61 seconds, which at the time made her the second-fastest woman ever at 200 meters. The race skyrocketed Thomas into the upper echelon of U.S. track and changed the way she viewed herself. In Tokyo, Thomas won a bronze medal in the 200 and ran on the silver medal-winning 4x100 relay team.

“It was definitely very different,” Thomas said. “Last time, I was excited to be here. I was definitely nervous, but it was a little more fun in that way. Now, it’s like I have no choice to advance to another round. It’s definitely added pressure.”

Thomas has become a bona fide star. She will be accompanied by a burgeoning one. McKenzie Long won triple NCAA championships for Mississippi — in the 100, 200 and 4x100 relay — a month ago, announcing herself as a future star and a dark-horse Olympic medal contender with a 21.83-second 200. Though she missed the 100-meter final earlier at the trials, she sprinted her way to Paris on Saturday in 21.91.

Long emerged in the wake of personal tragedy. Long’s mother, Tara Jones, died in February after a heart attack at 45. Jones had been deeply involved in Long’s track career. At the NCAA championships, Long kept wanting to call her mother. When she signed with Adidas, she wished Jones could have seen her in her professional uniform. She listens to the playlist her mother used to play while she worked out: “DON’T BE A LAZY B.”

Before the race, Richardson, whose biological mother died before the 2021 trials, embraced Long and told her, “I understand what you’re going through.” Long speaks to her mother out loud. As she warmed up, Long said aloud, “Let’s do this, Mom.” In her head, she heard her mother respond, “You got this, baby girl.”

“I know my mom is smiling from cheek to cheek,” Long said afterward. “I know she’s beyond proud of me, and that’s all I could ever want.”

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