Noah Lyles Ambitiously Predicts His Exact 100m and 200m Times for World Athletics Champs

Noah Lyles Ambitiously Predicts His Exact 100m and 200m Times for World Athletics Champs

Edwin Kiplagat
updated at August 10, 2023 at 3:38 PM
  • Noah Lyles has set an ambitious goal for the 2023 World Athletics Championships
  • He plans on breaking the 200m world record and becoming the second-fastest 100m runner ever
  • The 26-year-old American is the reigning world 200m champion

American sprinter Noah Lyles is not one to shy away from making bold predictions. The world 200m champion has predicted the exact time he will run in the upcoming World Athletics championships.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake are the only athletes faster than Lyles in the 200m. He won the 100m at the Paris Diamond League a few months ago.

Usain Bolt, Noah Lyles, Olympics, World Athletics, Letsile Tebogo
Noah Lyles is the third fastest 200m runner ever. Photo by Mike Hewitt.
Source: Getty Images

He posted on his Instagram that he will run the 100m in 9.65 seconds and 200m in 19.10 seconds at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary. The event is set for August 19-27.

Running 9.65 in the 100m will make him the second fastest in the 100m, but he will be a few seconds behind world record holder Usain Bolt (9.58).

Recording 19.10 seconds in the 200m will be a world record. Bolt currently holds the world record (19.19), while Blake is the second fastest with 19.26.

"They say if they don’t know your dreams then they can’t shoot them down. But I have always been more of a guy who loves to hear the screams from the heaters, got a nice ring to it," he wrote on Instagram.

If Lyles achieves both, he will be one of the greatest runners ever.

Lyles personal best in 100m and 200m

The 26-year-old's personal best in the 100m is 9.86 seconds, a time he ran in 2019 in Shanghai, China. He ran a wind-assisted 9.80 (+4.4) seconds in May 2023.

He won the 100m at the Paris Diamond League in 9.97 seconds, beating Africa's fastest man Ferdinand Omanyala, former world champion Yohan Blake and reigning Olympics champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs. He will face tough competition from world champion and compatriot Fred Kerley.

The 200m is Lyles's speciality. He won the world title last year in Eugene, Oregon, in 19.31 seconds, the third fastest time ever, per World Athletics.

19.10 seconds in the 200m is ambitious, but no one thought Bolt would run 100m in 9.58 seconds in 2009. Therefore, it is within the realm of possibility.

Lyles breaks Bolt's record

Sports Brief reported that Noah Lyles registered another superb performance run to win 200m at the London Diamond League on July 23. The American sprinter set a new World Lead in the 200m in a time of 19.47 seconds.

He broke his own record of 19.67 seconds that he set at the Kingston Grand Prix in May and is looking in fine shape to complete a double at the World Athletics Championships next month.

In London, he held off World U-20 Champion Letsile Tebogo - who crossed the line at 19.50 seconds to set a new African record - as Zharnel Hughes set a new national record to complete the podium places in 19.73 seconds.

Authors
Edwin Kiplagat photo
Edwin Kiplagat
Edwin Kiplagat has five years of experience in journalism working as a Sports Editor at Africa Insight Communications and ESPN. Edwin Kiplagat is a Bachelor's Degree holder in journalism from the Multimedia University of Kenya.