Noah Lyles has said his fellow sprinters may be in trouble this season. The world 200m champion opened it by nearly grabbing a win in his complementary event, the 100m, at the USATF Bermuda Games on Saturday.
Lyles couldn’t quite track down surprise winner Jerome Blake of Canada in the final.
Blake, who ranked 46th in the world last year with a 10.06-second personal best, prevailed in 10.38 seconds into a hefty 5.6 meter-per-second headwind. Lyles was third in 10.39, registering the same time to the thousandth of a second as second-place Erriyon Knighton.
“Of course conditions aren’t what you wanted, but I was just here to catch vibes, to run against some fast people, you know, to have some fun,” Lyles told Lewis Johnson on NBC.
USATF BERMUDA GAMES: Full Results
Lyles began his outdoor season expressing confidence.
“These practices that I’ve been putting down consistently, there hasn’t been a Noah that’s practiced like this before,” Lyles said an interview published last month. “I scare people with the times that I put down in practice.”
None of Saturday’s times will put fear into anybody because athletes faced headwinds more than 10 miles per hour. Lyles’ 100m personal best is 9.86.
So his race is better measured by how he fared against the field. Lyles became a bigger favorite after countrymen Kenny Bednarek, Ronnie Baker and Marvin Bracy withdrew before the meet.
Though Blake won, the most interesting foe was Knighton, who broke Usain Bolt junior records last year en route to a fourth-place finish at the Olympics. Lyles and Knighton will likely be battling for the 200m title at the world championships in July.
Lyles began last year bidding to compete in the 100m and 200m at the Olympics, then placed seventh in the
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