It won’t be the magnificent Letsile Tebogo who stands between Noah Lyles and greatness.
“Omae wa-mo shindeiru”. You are already dead. You are finished. Message in anime, as Noah Lyles likes it. The phrase of the protagonist of Hokuto no ken (Fist of the North Star)), his latest reading. Manga heroes and martial arts. Heroes. Goku. The motivation of someone who wants to be Usain Bolt. And who ran a final with Covid in which he came third.
The language of important announcements. Sent urgently, via X, to the impertinent African athlete who dared to make him sweat in Wednesday’s semi-finals, and even beat him. The mind games he likes, which he believes unbalance his rivals, and perhaps he doesn’t even know that Tebogo deleted himself from the social networks last year — “leaving the social networks was a big deal. Everyone says what they want and that can affect me mentally,” he said then — and that his strength is silence: “Champions rarely speak. They just act and the world around them speaks.”
Tebogo doesn’t speak. Tebogo runs. Tebogo comes out better. At 10m he is one tenth ahead of the American. He keeps up the pace on the curve, which he runs through, lane seven, with the magnificent reference of Ken Bednarek, a white handkerchief wrestler. He runs after the American, silver medallist in Tokyo, and always ahead of Lyles, who only cuts four hundredths of a second off him in the first 100m. In 10.12s, the Botswana steed passes them; in 10.18s the American hero, famous for his meteoric progression on the straight. The acceleration that Tebogo produces and that he is not able to replicate. Tebogo is a lightning bolt. He crashes into a wall. Roadrunner and Coyote, humiliated.
The second 100m, thrown, was 9.34s by Tebogo, 21, from Gaborone. Lyles could not even catch his friend Bednarek, a tenth slower (9.44s). To win, Tebogo needs to run an almost perfect race and achieve the sixth best time in history (19.46s) and an African record for a 200m always dominated by Bolt’s 19.19s in Berlin 15 years ago (9.92s + 9.27s). Bednarek, silver, 19.62s. Lyles, bronze, 19.70s.
Tebogo, tall (1.86m), with a beautiful, relaxed and fast stride, is the first African athlete to be an Olympic champion in a pure speed event. And he has not gone through the university system in the United States, like most of the great talents of his continent.
The sprint is a story of contrasts. McLaughlin-Bol. Lyles-Tebogo. Same speed, different soul. Same desire. Tebogo gave up a scholarship in the United States, where universities were calling him for his speed, and still lives in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, a gigantic expanse in the centre of the south of the continent, South Africa below, Namibia to the west, Zimbabwe to the east. He is a 21-year-old arrow who dazzled everyone in 2023, the first African medallist in the 100m at a World Championships (silver after Lyles) and bronze in the 200m. A man with a mission. “I’m just an African boy on a mission to bring Africa to the world,” he says. And in his headphones, traditional Botswana music, always the roots.
In the stands, Carl Lewis, who announces the afternoon with his Showwhen it was time to give the three Molière blows that opened the session. Taking steps like a jumper, changing hands. Enjoying the spotlight. A champion who speaks and who hopes that, 40 years after Los Angeles, Lyles will join his club of North American winners of the 100m and 200m.
Lyles talks a lot. He comes out of the door at the presentation jumping, with the gestures of his heroes, a thick gold choker around his neck. And he tells Tebogo a few hours before the 200m final, in the middle of the afternoon, still hot, in Paris, don’t move, you’re dead, I want to be the third American since Jesse Owens in Berlin 1936, the father of all speed myths, to win the 100m and 200m at the same Olympic Games: after that, only Bobby Morrow, in Melbourne 1956, and Carl Lewis, 1984. And then there would come Noah Lyles, of course, the Captain America of athletics, who continues to fall asleep in his heels, coming out without enough strength on the supports, which don’t hurt the ground.
And Usain Bolt, always on the increasingly distant horizon of Lyles’ ambition, who a year ago, when he won the three golds at the Budapest World Championships, already announced that the world records of the Jamaican who dominated the world sprint from 2008 to 2016 – 9.58s in the 100m; 19.19s in the 200m – were on his agenda, and that he would start by improving his start. It does not seem that he has even taken the first step to get closer. And the ambitions are growing. He wants to be popular. To be part of the conversation in his country beyond athletics, beyond his training in Florida with Lance Baumann. He considers himself a genius of the sport. marketingand provokes the players of the dream teamwho are angry. “I want everyone to know me,” he says before the race. He repeats it every day. “A new fire burns inside me.” He wants to be a legend and leaves the track with a yellow card for his excesses in the presentation, for the kick he gave to the starting block, destroying the number 5 that distinguished him, and sitting in an office chair with wheels (the American federation and the Olympic committee assured that he has Covid). But all the mouths that he thought he had closed forever with his victory in the 100m will open again. You are already dead, they will tell him.
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