There are a few individual sporting titles that require an almost unfathomable sense of bravado and swagger, a willful rejection of humility and full embrace of manifest destiny. One is the heavy weight champion of the world, where the winner must embrace the idea that he is the single baddest person on the planet and could basically beat everyone else up if need be. The second is the 100-meter dash champion – the fastest person in the world, whether it be in the men’s or women’s division. It takes a fair amount of, shall we say chutzpa, to think you can line up and run faster than everyone else. And I know there’s plenty of glamour races in track – say, the mile. But it’s not who can run across town the fastest. It’s who can get across the field before anyone else.
That title, or titles, have been awarded at this year’s World Track and Field Championships, and both the men’s and women’s crowns have gone to Americans that carry equal part swagger and chip on the championship shoulders. On the men’s side, Noah Lyles won the 100 after years of 200-meter dominance, including world titles in 2019 and 2022. And his performance was as flamboyant as it was exhilarating, including choreographed celebrations by his family after the title and quite a bit of showboating during each heat. And after he won, he made sure to remind everyone that no one thought he could win – even though a whole bunch of experts actually predicted he would win. That’s part of the psychology of world class sprinters, and really world champions across a bunch of sports – make it you against the world. Set up a bogeyman to race against beyond the other seven athletes in your heat. Which is part of the beauty of the 100-meter dash. It’s not simply that you have the physical ability to win the race – because honestly, a lot of people do. It's that you’ve manufactured the psychological condition to believe you can and should. That’s the swagger of the world’s fastest man, a far cry from the self-doubt that often inflicts athletes in longer and less instinctive events.
The women’s champion, American Sha’Carri Richardson, had an even greater axe to grind, routed in her ban from the Tokyo Olympic games after testing positive for marijuana a month before. And then missing the World Championship team in 2022 with a poor showing in the national championships. All that, along with her outspoken personality, made her one of the more polarizing athletes heading into the games, one who openly proclaimed that she wasn’t back, she’s better. She proved that in winning the 100-meter World Title in a gaudy 10.65 and beating likely favorite Shericka Jackson of Jamaica. Her story has more ups and downs than a season of The Bachelor, and it also necessitated an intense amount of self-belief in the face of a strong head wind of ugly critique, including a social media backlash after her 2021 suspension.
Both of these athletes and their accomplishments remind us of a few things. First, it’s a reminder that when it comes to world class sprinting, America still reigns supreme. We may have lost a stranglehold on a bunch of global sports, including most recently women’s soccer, but no one can claim to be faster from point A to B than the US – Jamaica included. Second, sports like track sprinting may seem purely physical, from innate speed to reaction time to muscle composition and on and on. Things that can be trained and harnessed but are also born. And as much as nature and nurture are hand and hand in this quest, this sport is as much mental and psychological as anything else. Perhaps the single greatest similarity between Lyles and Richardson aren’t their physical gifts. It’s their believe that against unimaginable odds, they would succeed. That takes a strength that’s nearly as rare as speed itself, and why 100-meter champions are as rare breed.
And finally, their wins remind us that there is nothing better than a comeback story – even if Lyles had never really left. Watching an athlete win title after title – let’s say Roger Federer – is great. But watching someone win after being left for irrelevant? That’s the stuff of movies, and why we all want to believe that Michael Jordan was in fact cut from his high school basketball team, which didn’t really happen.
For now, it’s Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson’s world. And of course, they knew it all along.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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