Culture
How Noah Lyles became Olympic 100m champion: A 300-page textbook, biomechanics and a stickman
Sixty metres into the men’s 100-metre Olympic final in Paris and Noah Lyles is third. He is three-hundredths of a second down on his compatriot Fred Kerley and Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
Yet — and this may sound bizarre — that is exactly where he needs to be.
Lyles has unmatched top-end speed. He wins as Usain Bolt used to, opening up his stride (to a ridiculous 2.5m) and eating up ground on others before cruising past. He holds form while they struggle and decelerate.
The headline is Lyles winning by five-thousandths of a second in the closest men’s 100m Olympic final ever — and the hardest for which to qualify. Lyles (9.78sec) ran the fastest time in an Olympic 100m final since Bolt’s Olympic record (9.63) in London back in 2012.
Over that final 40m, Lyles can close anyone. He did it in 2023 to win the World Championships and again in trials to reach Paris.
The final frontier for him to become Olympic champion was the start… so here’s the story of how a 75-year-old and a stickman helped give Lyles the edge.
“Your reaction times suck,” says Ralph Mann.
It is July 2023 and the former Olympian — he won 400m hurdles silver at the 1972 Munich Olympics — who holds a PhD in biomechanics, is helping coach Lyles on his block starts.
At Lyles’ training base in Clermont, Florida, Mann, now 75, has a marquee set up by the side of the track. There are a series of cameras pointed at the blocks and a laptop running software that is going to eke the final per cent out of Lyles’ starts.
Lyles at the start of the semi-final in Paris (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Over the last 40 years, Mann has watched and collected data on more than 500 of the best athletes. “We know what it takes to be an elite starter,” he says. Mann has written a 300-page textbook on the mechanics of sprinting and hurdling. What he doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.
Mann has applied that knowledge and decades of experience into a software, created in 1999, that generates a stickman that overlays the video of the sprinter in the blocks. Adjusted for body size and weight (to Lyles), it shows where the limbs should be as the sprinter sets and springs out the blocks. If you’ve ever played a Mario Kart ghost race, it’s that, just applied to sprinting.
They can go frame-by-frame to see how Lyles moves compared to the most effective/efficient method, and it becomes a coaching tool for the session with real-time feedback.
Lyles’ problems were that his hips were too far back when he set and his foot turnover was poor on the first few steps. Compared to the stickman, Lyles was not compact enough in the drive phase (as the athletes get up to speed), his feet were coming up too high between steps and his contact time (how long the feet are on the floor) was too long. The ankles weren’t rigid enough, either.
In short, there was plenty to improve.
It meant that steps four to seven, which are all about extending range after getting out with the first three, would come up short compared to better starters. Mann explains to Lyles that the only way he can get faster is by reducing the time between steps and keeping contact time minimal. White tape was put horizontally across the track to give Lyles a visual representation of where he should be landing at specific steps (three and seven).
Lyles knows how the model works. When he asks Mann what he has set it at, he replies, “What we need to make you famous.” Lyles speaks about doing what works according to the model, in terms of his form, rather than what feels good. He has fully bought in.
He is loud and, to some, borderline arrogant, but Lyles shows vulnerability with Mann.
“Let’s see your precious model beat me,” he says, imploring Mann to set the model at better than Lyles’ absolute best. “Let it run away, let me get embarrassed,” says Lyles. At one stage, Mann stands over Lyles in the blocks and physically moves his hips forward in the set position. Lyles, half-joking, half-serious, says he feels like he isn’t even in the blocks.
There were green shoots of this working in February.
After losing six previous times, Lyles finally beat Christian Coleman over 60m indoors. Coleman (6.34sec) is the world record holder, but Lyles edged him out by one hundredth to take the U.S. indoors title in 6.43. Coleman got out faster, quicker with his foot turnover and was first to reach his second step, but Lyles was in contention enough (sixth at halfway, 30m) to close hard and took it on the line — you’ll see a theme developing.
For a guy who could not break 6.5sec in 2023, it was huge. Coleman then beat Lyles at the World Indoors in Glasgow in March, but Lyles ran 6.47 in the semi-final and 6.44 in the final.
Fast forward to Paris.
Mann was right: Lyles’ reaction times do suck, by Olympic standards anyway. He was the joint-slowest to react in the final (178milliseconds, with Letsile Tebogo), 26th of 27 among semi-finalists (167ms) and 46 of the 70 men in the heats, who did not false start, reacted quicker (161ms).
That is one of the hardest parts to train. Nobody wants to false start in the Olympics and the 80,000-capacity Stade de France is loud. Lyles responding slower than others did not help, but it would not be the difference between gold and silver.
Lyles, in lane seven because he finished third in his semi-final, takes his second and third steps before Thompson in lane three. It shows great foot turnover given he was the last to get out.
His form and mechanics are good, even if he doesn’t accelerate as quickly through the drive phase as the Jamaican, or Tokyo 2020 100m champion Marcell Jacobs. Lyles was last up until 40m, but by 30m was moving at the same speed as Thompson.
The 60m split is the one that matters: 6.44. Lyles is suddenly third, having jumped four places from the 50m mark, going past Jacobs (lane nine), Akani Simbine (lane five), Tobogo and Oblique Seville. The latter two are outside and inside Lyles respectively.
8 frames, 1 iconic 100m final 🖼️#Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/0Q6ItW3e4j
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) August 4, 2024
“I was fortunate to have Seville next to me because, all throughout the year, he’s been hitting that acceleration that I wasn’t hitting,” said Lyles. “I wasn’t going to let him go.”
Though, as Mann once said: “Noah’s biggest competition is Noah.” His 60m split in the final was only one hundredth off what he managed at the U.S. Indoors. At the Paris Diamond League in June 2023, Lyles won in 9.97, going through 60m in 6.55. He saved one of his best starts ever for the final.
Thompson and Fred Kerley went through 60m in 6.41sec, but both had already well hit terminal velocity and were slowing. Lyles peaked slightly later than the pair and held form for longer, slower to decelerate.
Lyles’ extra stride length adds up. Across the full race, Lyles (44) took one fewer step than Thompson (45). The Jamaican might dwarf Lyles for arm or leg size, but strong arms can only pull an athlete to the line a certain amount. There is no replacement for good mechanics.
Lyles was in last at 40 meters, 7th at halfway…
His close & holding on to speed is amazing.
You can see the slight difference in the last two 10 meter splits. He ran .84 and .86 versus Thompson’s .85 and .87
What a race. What a close. pic.twitter.com/fpBAE06QJL
— Steve Magness (@stevemagness) August 4, 2024
Lyles closed the last 40m in 3.35sec, the fastest in the race. Thompson closed in 3.38. Five others, barring Simbine who finished hard in fourth, covered the last 40m in 3.4sec or slower. “I wasn’t patient enough with my speed — I should have let it bring me to the line,” said Thompson.
In his book — it’s a textbook, really — Mann lists a series of athletes as the best in certain categories. There are the most talented, the most professional, most driven and best representatives of the sport, but he puts Lyles as one of his favourites.
After 100m gold in Paris, and a legitimate shot at doing the double with the 200m, Lyles ought to put Mann in his favourites too.
“Ralph Mann, before I left for Paris, said this is how close first and second is going to be away from each other,” said Lyles, bringing his index finger and thumb close together to gesture an inch. “I can’t believe how right he was.”
GO DEEPER
Noah Lyles’ mouth wrote the check. On the Olympics stage, his feet cashed it
(Top photo: Andy Cheung/Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
Indiana coach Cignetti sends message to star transfer with pre-practice dress code lesson
Drone food delivery launches in New Jersey
FKA twigs sues ex-boyfriend Shia LaBeouf over ‘unlawful’ NDA
LAPD chief backed cops who shot at author, Weezer bassist’s ex; commission overruled him
What European Luxury Can Learn From American Fashion
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Rubio joins crucial G7 talks as Iran war set to dominate second day
A surprise resignation could open the door for an independent to win a Montana Senate seat
Video: Savannah Guthrie Says She Believes Her Mother Was Taken for Ransom
Stefanik grills University of Michigan leader on lack of audit after string of Chinese national arrests
Photos: More than one million displaced by Israel’s evacuations in Lebanon
-
Detroit, MI1 week agoDrummer Brian Pastoria, longtime Detroit music advocate, dies at 68
-
Science1 week agoHow a Melting Glacier in Antarctica Could Affect Tens of Millions Around the Globe
-
Movie Reviews1 week ago‘Youth’ Twitter review: Ken Karunaas impresses audiences; Suraj Venjaramoodu adds charm; music wins praise | – The Times of India
-
Science1 week agoI had to man up and get a mammogram
-
Sports6 days agoIOC addresses execution of 19-year-old Iranian wrestler Saleh Mohammadi
-
New Mexico4 days agoClovis shooting leaves one dead, four injured
-
Texas7 days agoHow to buy Houston vs. Texas A&M 2026 March Madness tickets
-
Tennessee3 days agoTennessee Police Investigating Alleged Assault Involving ‘Reacher’ Star Alan Ritchson