US sprint star Noah Lyles will have his final competitive track outing at the London Diamond League on Saturday before heading to the Paris Olympics. Lyles, who won the 100m and 200m titles at last year’s world championships in Budapest, will compete in the 100m in the British capital as part of his ongoing effort to establish himself as the successor to retired legend Usain Bolt.
In this race, Lyles will face Britain’s Anguilla-born Zharnel Hughes, who won bronze behind him in Hungary, as well as world silver medalist Letsile Tebago of Botswana and South Africa’s Akani Simbine.
“I’m looking forward to London, I feel it’s going to be special,” said Hughes, who was disqualified from the 100m final at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics won by Italy’s Marcell Jacobs.
“The fact it’s the last Diamond League before the Olympic Games, it’s going to be stacked and I want to lay something down there.”
Hughes co-stars alongside Lyles in the Netflix docu-series “Sprint”, but said he hadn’t realised how much his US rival talked about him.
“I didn’t really know he said that much about me until I saw the preview and I realise he said a lot,” said Hughes.
“I was like, ‘this guy can talk!’ I knew he talked, but I didn’t know he talked that much. Obviously me being a competitor, it raised all the red in me. I was like, ‘this guy, man! Shut up.’
“My girlfriend said ‘don’t try to let it get to your head. He’s saying these things so you guys can be thrown off psychologically’. So for me I use that desire, that red in me, and I try to put it out on the track.
“I’m looking forward to actually sitting down and hearing all the things that he had to say. It’s just the perfect timing leading up to the Olympic Games. I will see him in London and we’ll meet there – but I’ll talk with the spikes.
“He just has a loose mouth, but I guess that’s how he gets his confidence. At the end of the day he’s performing as well, so I have to give him credit.”
Apart from Zharnel Hughes, British interest will be represented by Louie Hinchliffe, coached by Carl Lewis, who won the 100m at the highly competitive NCAA championships with a personal best of 9.95 seconds before also securing the British title.
The meet in London, held at the stadium used for the 2012 Olympics and now home to Premier League club West Ham United, takes place just six days before the Paris 2024 opening ceremony and will feature a galaxy of talent beyond the men’s 100m.
Femke Bol will compete in the women’s 400m hurdles, fresh from breaking her own European record by half a second with a victory in 50.95 seconds in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. She became only the second woman, after US Olympic champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, to break the 51-second barrier.
A competitive women’s 800m event will feature Olympic gold medal hopeful Keely Hodgkinson against British teammates Laura Muir, Jemma Reekie, and Georgia Bell, as well as Uganda’s 2019 world champion Halimah Nakaayi.
In the shot put, American Ryan Crouser will fine-tune his preparations for a third Olympic gold by competing against teammate Joe Kovacs, New Zealand’s Tom Walsh, and Italy’s new European champion Leonardo Fabbri.
