Paris (AFP) – Noah Lyles, fresh from winning Olympic 100m gold in Paris, cruised his 200m heat at the Stade de France on Monday to keep his bid for a sprint treble alive. Lyles, who won the 100m in a photo-finish from Jamaican Kishane Thompson in 9.79 seconds, topped his 200m heat in 20.19sec. The triple world 200m champion had a slow start but as soon as he hit the bend, he looked in total control. The semi-finals are scheduled for 1802 GMT on Wednesday, with the final set for 1830 on Thursday.
“I was up by seven. My dang body got this clock that wakes up at seven because that’s when I practise every day,” Lyles said. “So that’s when I naturally wake up. But throughout the day, it’s kind of just been meandering, trying to get my body jump-started. I saw my physio and chiro at about 10, saw them till 12. Then I got some food, took a nap and woke up about 3.30. And here we are.”
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Lyles, who will also chase gold in the 4x100m relay, said the 200m remained his “favourite race because I feel it shows all my abilities.” “I spent years working on the 100m, but the 200 is where it’s at. This is where I get to show my speed and endurance and my top-end speed. This is where I get to show I’m stronger than everybody else.”
Lyles’ Jamaican partner Junelle Bromfield qualified for the semi-finals of the women’s 400m, on the couple’s two-year anniversary. “I watched it on TV while I was getting treatment,” Lyles said of Bromfield, who was a one-time training partner of Thompson, who was edged into 100m silver on Sunday by just five-thousandths of a second. He added: “We’ve been dating for two years now – it goes by fast. I’ve got pretty big plans for celebrations. I’m trying to give her a little more time. Last year we kind of went on a Noah Lyles campaign and unfortunately that cut into a lot of our vacation time.”
Also going through into the 200m semis as heat winners were fellow 100m finalists Letsile Tebogo of Botswana (20.10sec) and American Kenny Bednarek (19.96). Tebogo finished sixth in the 100m in a national record of 9.86sec, one ahead of Bednarek, and the Botswanan admitted it had been something he had had to “digest quickly and live for another day.” “It doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world even if you didn’t make it in the 100m,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t make it in the final, so I was grateful that I made it into the final.”
The 200m, he argued, was a more sympathetic event than the 100m. “The 100m is more of a tactical race. You have to get everything correct from the block, to your running, even timing your dip. It’s a lot of tactics. In the 200m, you know you’ve got 200m to go, where you can correct a silly mistake along the way,” said Tebogo.
A third American, Erriyon Knighton, a silver and bronze medallist at the past two world championships, topped another heat in 19.99sec. Canada’s Andre de Grasse, defending champion and silver medallist at the Rio Games, also qualified, clocking 20.30sec behind Lyles. South Africa’s 400m world record holder and gold medallist in Rio, Wayde van Niekerk, went through after finishing third in his heat, won by Liberia’s Joseph Fahnbulleh.
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