Noah Lyles's audacious boast of breaking Bolt's 200m world record not so far fetched
Jamaican icon set 19.19 second mark at 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin
This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.
Fourteen years ago this month I sat in the upper deck at Olympiastadion in Berlin, savouring a rare chance to watch live sports as a fan, and not a journalist, and watching the undisputed greatest of all time show us why he deserved the G.O.A.T label.
The athlete, of course, was Usain Bolt, charging from the blocks in the 200-metre final at the world championships, with seven other world-class sprinters straining to keep pace. Two men — Shawn Crawford of the United States, and Alonzo Edward of Panama — fared better than the other contenders. Eighty metres into the race, those two remained within Bolt's postal code.
But by the halfway point, Crawford, who faded to fourth place, and Edward, the eventual silver medallist, had fallen away like spent booster rockets. The final straight away, and all the crowd's attention belonged to Bolt, who finished in 19.19 seconds, breaking his own world record by more than a 10th of a second.
That night, I thought Bolt's mark, which came four days after he ran 9.58 to set a 100m world record, might stand forever.
WATCH | Bolt breaks his own 200m world record:
Now I think I might have been wrong. Noah Lyles definitely thinks I miscalculated.
The 26-year-old American sprint star, already a two-time world champion over 200 metres, laid out an audacious set of goals in a recent Instagram post:
I'm not sure if Lyles has ever read The Secret, the self-help book that urges readers to speak goals into reality, but this post is some high-level manifesting.
It also demonstrates a confidence that borders on delusion — which is exactly the mindset a potential medallist needs. By the time you've reached a world final, you've already defeated the longest of odds, so if you're Noah Lyles, whose current personal records are 9.86 and 19.30, you might as well keep believing you can achieve the improbable.
But Lyles's post, which set track and field social media buzzing during the sleepy week leading up to world championships, does prompt a set of questions.
Why does Lyles think he can chop .29 off his season's best to hit 9.65?
Nobody wins the 100/200 double in the post-Bolt era, so what makes Lyles different?
How does Lyles think he can clear the high bar set by the sprint world's G.O.A.T?
To those questions, I'll add one of my own:
What if Noah Lyles is right?
Blasphemous suggestion
Yes, I know it's blasphemous to suggest. That magical week in August of 2009, Bolt seemed to launch the 100 and 200m world records decades into the future. Even Lyles, in imagining his fastest day ever, pictures himself half a step behind Bolt. You can almost see Lyles on the receiving end of that famous one-liner Muhammad Ali directed at the hypothetical foe who dreamed he could beat the greatest.
"He better wake up and apologize," Ali said.
So even Lyles's lofty goal setting acknowledges a rock-solid truth: If you're running the 100 metres, Bolt will always be first and everyone else is running for second.
But the 200 is a different race. If you don't believe me, look at the stats.
Bolt achieved the 100/200 double in six of the seven major championships contested between 2008 and 2016. The one outlier was 2011, the year the odious one-and-done false start rule got him DQ'd from the 100m final.
But no man has won both short sprints in the same global event since 2016. The races, while both fast and intense, are still distinct, and stocked with specialists ready to outrun anybody looking to test their range by trying to win both.
Ferdinand Omanyala, the Kenyan sprinter who is built like he competes in powerlifting contests between track meets, would likely gas out in a 200, but his 9.84 season's best marks him as a medal contender in the 100. And Erryion Knighton might lack the raw top-end velocity to reach the 100m podium, but his 19.49-second personal best in the 200 tells us that he blends speed and staying power better than almost anybody else on earth.
"Almost," because Lyles exists. Last summer he ran 19.30 to win world championship gold, and break an American record that had stood since 1996. That time is the third-fastest in history.
Blake holds 2nd fastest 200 time
Number two belongs to Yohan Blake, who ran a blistering 19.26 at the end of the 2011 season. He posted that result despite a lacklustre start — or because of it.
If you break a world-class 200m dash into 50m segments, the second 50 is generally the fastest. The speed a sprinter brings from the curve to the straightaway has to carry them through the second half of the race.
As we discussed last week, the home stretch is a challenge. Deceleration is real, and so the final 50m segment is generally the slowest. By easing into his top speed, Blake managed the fastest second half ever. According to people much better at track math than I am, Bolt's record in 2009 was made up of a 9.92 first half, followed by 9.27 on the straight. Blake, meanwhile, opened in 10.14 and closed in an eye-popping 9.12.
If any current sprinter is equipped to implement a similar strategy, it's Lyles – a 200m runner with legitimate 100m speed. Watch Lyles overcome a slow start to close ground on the fast-starting Christian Coleman in this 100m race from 2019. Both men finished in 9.86, a personal best for Lyles. And if you need a more recent example, check out this 100 from Bermuda earlier this spring. Another early deficit and another late surge.
When he's healthy, Lyles is the best combination of top speed, speed endurance and 200m race modelling since, well, you know who…
World records, meanwhile, are the language mainstream fans understand, and distance races have delivered. Faith Kipyegon of Kenya has set two this season, one each in the 1,500 and the 5,000. Lamecha Girma established one more in the steeplechase.
Sprinters work with thinner margins, but last year here came Shericka Jackson, whose 21.45 in the women's 200 at worlds trailed only Florence Griffith-Joyner.
And now here's Lyles, whose 19.47 last month in London signaled that he had rebounded from an early summer COVID-19 infection, with a four-week run-up to worlds.
Is it probable that he'll lop another third of a second from that time?
Nope.
But is it possible?
Why not?
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