IT doesn’t seem like American sprinter Noah Lyles would get over his 200m Olympic loss to Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo in a very long time as he has re-opened the conversation bordering around his bronze medal outing in Paris.
According to Lyles, a failed strategy and not listening to his girlfriend Junelle Bromfield cost him the Gold Medal and not COVID. He also disclosed that after the semifinal, where he finished second behind Tebogo, he had used up all his energy and had to change his running style.
“The strategy that we were going for was I was going to give all of my energy upfront because I didn’t know if it would come at the end. I knew from running in the semifinal that my top-end speed was no longer with me. You could say that COVID had it under hostage, but I wasn’t producing the top-end speeds I was normally producing in the last few weeks, which had been very high,” said Lyles.
“I was trying to rely on how fast I could get up to top speed and my ability to be able to hold top speed. It got me the bronze medal but it wasn’t enough for me to do better. Now my girlfriend has said many times that I’m never allowed to use that strategy again and I’m in full belief with her that I will never use that strategy again,” he added.
“Looking back, it’s not normally my race strategy. My normal race strategy is a lot more timed and paced, and it’s actually the same strategy I used back in Tokyo (in the 2020 200m final), and it got me the same result,” he concluded.
Eighteen-Eleven Media