Noah Lyles is back — with a win, not a bang

New York Times

11-07-2025

Noah Lyles is back. Perhaps not with a bang, but at least with a win.
Into a slight headwind, he clocked 19.88sec over 200 metres in Monaco to win and extend his unbeaten Diamond League streak for that distance to seven races since 2019.
More importantly, he chased down Letsile Tebogo in their first meeting since Botswana's golden boy beat Lyles in the 200m Olympic final last August.
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For Lyles, times are immaterial this summer. He gets a wildcard into September's World Championship because he won the 200m world title in Budapest in 2023 and edged out Jamaica's Kishane Thomspon by five-thousandths of a second for Olympic 100m gold last summer.
So why did he fly to Monaco instead of racing the 200m at home at the Prefontaine Classic last weekend? Tebogo won that in 19.76sec, the fastest time in the world this year.
'My coach said he doesn't want me running three weeks in a row, so I decided to choose Monaco,' he told reporters. 'We already had London (100m, next Saturday) on the books, so we had to say 'hey, we got to choose one'.'
Injury has resulted, perhaps, in caution; the slightly humbling reality that every champion must face. Lyles was a late addition for Monaco only this week, and some refused to believe he would race until they saw him in the blocks. His winter racing surmounted to four 60m races, a 4x100m relay outing and a first 400m since his high-school days. Then nothing for nearly three months.
'It was inflammation to the groin,' Lyles said. 'To be honest, it was just a freak accident. There's no way we could have predicted it would have happened. It sucked, but thankfully we've been able to secure it. It's gone now, and we've been able to continuously start practicing intensely again (for) about two weeks.
'Being able to come out here and go after it, and not have to worry about anything, is really great.'
Fully fit or not, Lyles' main character energy is still on display. The 200m had a slight delay with Mondo Duplantis attempting (but not completing) a pole vault world record.
As the athletes waited in the tunnel, some bopping their head to music playing over the loudspeakers, and others with hands on their hips, Lyles lurked behind them all. He looked straight ahead with the air of a predator watching their prey.
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He was — by the standards of the third-fastest man in history over 200m — rusty. A reaction time of 0.208secs was by far the slowest in the field (he is notoriously poor at getting out of the blocks quickly anyway) and put him fourth at 10m.
Normally, Lyles is eating up ground on those outside him around the bend. Here, Tebogo, running on the lane inside Lyles, had the edge at 100m.
Nobody wants to run outside of the Botswana man because of how hard he can close. American Kenny Bednarek has pinpointed that as a reason why he has self-destructed in certain 200m races against Tebogo.
In Monaco, Lyles won how he always wins: supreme top-end mechanics, better maintaining his stride length and fluidity as others tie up, their form degrades and they decelerate more.
Tebogo led until 130m, and then the American record-holder was clinical when the Olympic champion tied up. A Lyles lead of one-hundredth 30m out became daylight at the finish — he won by nearly one-tenth.
He saluted the crowd, shook hands, and posed for the cameras. After all, this is Lyles. He is a showman.
'Having great competitors and fast competitors on top of that is what it's all about,' he said of the battle between him and Tebogo, which is 3-2 in Lyles' favour for their meetings over 200m. 'We bring out the best in each other. You always know that you're going to be able to keep going further and further (because of facing each other).'
Lyles calls the 200m his 'wife' — and the 100m his 'mistress' — because of his differing relationships with the sprint events.
He turns 28 next week and, listening to him in Monaco, he appears wiser for this year's injury problems and the events of last summer's Olympics, at which he targeted triple gold. The dream was alive when he won the 100m, only for it to come crashing down as he contracted COVID-19, leading to him being taken off the track in a wheelchair after winning 200m bronze and then missing the relays.
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'It's a blessing to be back on track,' Lyles said. 'It's always great to start your first race off on a win. I think that might be my second fastest season opener — no, third-fastest — so you can never be mad at that.'
He has had four faster 200m outdoor openers in the past seven years, but the sentiment was clear. An imperfect win is still a win.
Physically and mentally, he knows what it takes to build a season and navigate the rounds of a championship.
'I'm always expecting a victory, or I'm always shooting for it, I should say,' he said, once more checking himself. 'I don't see any reason not to. If I wasn't, we wouldn't have good races.'
Remember that this man is now chasing a feat that only Usain Bolt managed at a World Championship: winning four consecutive 200m titles.
'I just believe that every moment was made for me, that I was made for such a time as this,' Lyles said.