SAINT-DENIS, France — Between the Noah Lyles drama in the sprints and distance demon Sifan Hassan’s 62-kilometer odyssey that wrapped up with a gold medal, track and field took the Olympics on a wild ride over 10 days of close calls, upsets and drama.
In summing up the winners and losers from the meet that featured another world record for Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and three gold-medal performances from Gabby Thomas, maybe the biggest winner was track itself.
Struggling for eyeballs in a post-Usain Bolt world, the sport got terrific shows from Lyles, who battled COVID, and from Sha’Carri Richardson, who put a stamp, and a stomp, on the U.S. 4×100-meter relay gold in a visceral reminder that she is very compelling TV.
As much as the personalities, it was the dramatic finishes and the buzz on the track that made it hard to turn away.
“One night, I had Snoop Dogg on one side of me and Simone Biles on the other and she said ‘I had no idea people ran that quickly,’” said Sebastian Coe, the leader of World Athletics. “The sport became cool. It’s the first time my kids have thought anything I’ve done on the planet was cool.”
Track will open the Olympics, not close them, four years from now at the LA Olympics. If that meet goes anything like this one, those Games will be well on their way to success.
A look at some winners and losers from the Olympic track meet in Paris:
Hassan is never going to draw the eyeballs of, say, a Lyles or Richardson. Maybe she should. Trading elbows as she glided past her last remaining competition in the marathon was one heck of a way to close out track at the Olympics.
Hassan won gold and here’s her tally over the last two Olympics:
—Bronze in the 1,500 (2021).
—Gold (2021) and bronze (2024) in the 5,000.
—Gold (2021) and bronze (2024) in the 10,000.
—Gold in the marathon Sunday.
Over the span of two Olympics, she ran more than 86.5 kilometers.
Could there be a legit track rivalry brewing between Lyles, who lost in his best race, the 200, to Letsile Tebogo of Botswana? Someone asked the new champion if he wanted to someday be the “face of track” — a role Lyles is clearly is angling for.
“I think, for me, I can’t be the face of athletics because I’m not an arrogant or a loud person like Noah,” Tebogo said.
Though the stakes weren’t that high — Olympic medals aren’t life and death — Lyles’ bout with COVID changed his Olympics, altered the vibe at the track meet (for a night, at least) and reminded the world that the virus will never go away.
Hard to call someone a loser who walks out of Paris holding a gold medal.
But the mind games he played with Britain’s Josh Kerr clearly got to Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the 1,500 meters. For the third straight time in a major championship, he couldn’t win what’s largely seen as track’s marquee distance race.
Four days after finishing fourth, Ingebrigtsen mentally rebooted to win the 5,000 meters in convincing fashion.
“When you hit a wall, and don’t perform the way you want to, it’s very difficult,” Ingebrigtsen said. “I got another shot, I just had to make the most of it.”
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone makes the 400-meter hurdles look so easy. She finished in 50.37 seconds to break the world record for a sixth time, then followed up with a 47.71 split in America’s romp through the women’s 4×400.
The 50-second barrier awaits.
Armando Duplantis had clinched a gold medal much earlier, but he was still holding his pole and staring at a bar higher than any human had ever cleared in the pole vault.
Duplantis, the Louisiana-born 24-year-old who competes for his mother’s native Sweden, cleared 6.25 meter s (20 feet, 6 inches) to break the world record for the ninth time — but the first time at the Olympics.
Hurdles don’t look like much of a hurdle to some of these athletes, Coe says, before suggesting he’s heard calls for an idea that is likely bound to go nowhere.
“The only thing I would say is, there’s probably a case now for looking at the height of the hurdles,” he said. “These guys don’t really look like they’re breaking their form very much to do that.”
Currently, the women’s hurdles in the 400 are set at 30 inches high and the men’s are at 36.
The U.S. won 34 medals and 14 golds, matching numbers not seen since the 1960s and before.
Lyles, Richardson, McLaughlin-Levrone and Thomas are the obvious candidates to become bigger than the game.
“But those athletes who have competed here have been mobbed walking out of the stadium and they’re still walking through their own hometowns in anonymity,” Coe said of the general lack of love for track in the U.S. outside of the Olympics. “That we need to address. ”
Track has four years to figure out its U.S. problem. One issue — track fans in the States who hope to catch all these stars-in-the-making on TV will really have to hunt around.
NBC’s contract to stream many of track’s major meets, the Diamond League, comes to an end in 2024, replaced by a track website that will charge a hefty monthly fee to watch the action.
Thomas wasn’t the only track athlete disappointed with this news when it landed in teh spring.
“This might be the worst news I’ve heard from the diamond league since … ever,” she said on social media.
Coe said there’s a fine line between finding new ways to distribute track’s best races and making sure the average fans can find them on old-fashioned TV. The future of track in the U.S. could very well depend on it.
“This is our moment,” Coe said. “We can’t sort of allow this to glidepath gently into anything other than a really successful 2028.”
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
