Lyles and Hassan bookend fabulous Olympic athletics programme

Letsile Tebogo of Team Botswana crosses the finish line to win the gold medal in the Men's 200m Final on day thirteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 08, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Andy Cheung/Getty Images)

By Reuters

13 Aug 2024

In one of the best track and field meetings in history, 43 nations won medals at the Olympics, including two silvers for South Africa.

The Olympic athletics programme, highlighted by the shortest event and then the longest, saw performances of astonishing quality and spine-tingling drama, played out to a beautiful and unique purple backdrop that will forever mean Paris.

The closest and highest-quality men’s 100m race and a late-night pole vault world record lit up the first week, while Sifan Hassan’s final-day marathon win to cap a barely believable hat-trick of medals was a fitting way to bring down the curtain.

“It’s been fantastic and I think the quality of athletics at the moment is almost beyond description,” Sebastian Coe, head of World Athletics, said this week. “I can’t remember a time when we’ve had such a bandwidth of excellence.”

Nowhere was that more visible than in the men’s 100m where Noah Lyles caught Kishane Thompson on the line to win by five-thousandths of a second in 9.79. The six men behind them were also sub-10 – the first time that has happened in a legal race. South Africa’s Akani Simbine came fourth in 9.82s.

Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands wins gold in the women’s marathon. (Photo: Anton Geyser / Gallo Images)

Olympic athletics Hassan Victorious Sifan Hassan at Invalides in Paris on 11 August 2024. (Photo: Anton Geyser / Gallo Images)

Lyles, the sport’s biggest showman, was unable to double up, taking bronze in the 200m and then revealing he was running with Covid.

Instead, Botswana’s quiet assassin, Letsile Tebogo, became the first African to win it with a time if 19.46s.

The US delivered a world record in the rarely run mixed 4x400 relay but Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s obliteration of her own world record to win the 400m hurdles was of a different magnitude of quality. She clocked 50.37s, winning the race by a mammoth 1.5 seconds.

Armand Duplantis also beat his own pole vault world record in a moment of great theatre at the Stade de France. With all other events finished and the Swede’s expected gold long pocketed, he failed twice at 6.25m before sailing clear to a stupendous roar.

Read more: Olympic Games Paris 2024

Coe hoped the men’s 1,500m would be a “race for the ages” and it was – though not in the way he or anyone else expected.

Briton Josh Kerr ran the race of his life to get past defending champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen, only for long-shot American Cole Hocker to come past them both and win in a huge personal best to produce one of the biggest upsets of the Games. His time of 3:27.65 was a new Olympic record.

Ingebrigtsen bounced back to win the 5,000m, while in the women’s 1,500m Kenya’s peerless Faith Kipyegon completed an unprecedented hat-trick.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the US competes in the 400m hurdles final. (Photo: Patrick Khachfe / Getty Images)

American success

Medals galore over the shorter distances has usually been the norm for the US but they found remarkable success in all sorts of events in Paris.

When Yared Nuguse took bronze behind Hocker it was the first time in 112 years that two Americans had medalled in the 1,500m.

Grant Fisher went toe-to-toe with the mighty Africans to win impressive bronze medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m, while Kenneth Rooks did the same for a notable 3,000m steeplechase silver.

After relatively slim pickings in Tokyo, the US were back in charge – and some – with 14 gold, 11 silver and nine bronze medals to set them up for hosting the next Games in Los Angeles.

Noah Lyles wins the 100m final at Stade de France on 4 August 2024. (Photo: Michael Steele / Getty Images)

Letsile Tebogo of Team Botswana crosses the finish line to win the gold medal in the men’s 200m. (Photo: Andy Cheung / Getty Images)

In contrast, Jamaica had a torrid time, barely featuring in the sprints they have dominated for years, and their solitary gold medal was a shock discus win for Roje Stona.

The hosts also had a campaign to forget, despite the nightly roars of support from fantastic fans who filled every session. They were saved from a total wipe-out by Cyrena Samba-Mayela’s silver in the 100m hurdles on the final night of track action.

There was still one more event to go, however, and it provided a fabulous and scarcely believable finale as Dutchwoman Hassan won the women’s marathon after taking bronze in the 5,000m and 10,000m.

She was the first woman to even attempt the treble, let alone medal in all three, and now stands alongside athletics royalty in the shape of Emil Zatopek, who won all three in 1952.

Forty-three countries won athletics medals, with Saint Lucia, Dominica and Pakistan doing so for the first time, all golds, via Julien Alfred in the women’s 100m, Thea LaFond in the women’s triple jump and Arshad Nadeem in the men’s javelin. Reuters/DM

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

Sport

American success