Stars align as athletics events get under way

PARIS, France (AFP) — Brash, brazen, brilliant.

American sprint duo Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson will look to live up to their billing as Olympic 100-meter favorites when the track and field program at the Paris Games starts on Friday.

The reigning world champions are the stars of a recently-released Netflix docuseries entitled “Sprint,” giving an up-close and personal view into their lives on and off the track.

At the Stade de France — with those cameras still turning for Season 2 — the debate will be whether Lyles, who won three golds at last year’s Budapest world championships, can beat defending champion Marcell Jacobs of Italy and go on to be crowned as the rightful successor to sprint king Usain Bolt.

The other hot topic is whether Richardson can hold off Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the aging five-time world 100m champion seeking her third Olympic gold in the discipline.

For both Americans, it is a question of redemption.

Lyles maintains that the 200m bronze he won at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics “still burns a hole” in his chest.

Richardson didn’t even make the plane for Japan after being banned for taking marijuana.

“I know exactly where I am ahead of Paris,” said Lyles, who arrived in Paris after setting a personal best of 9.81 seconds at the London Diamond League.

“The more eyes on me, the better I perform, or at least that’s what my therapist says. When the TV cameras are on me and people are there, I am not losing.”

Richardson, seeking to become the first US woman to win an Olympic 100m title since Gail Devers in 1996, added: “When I get on the blocks, it’s about getting the job done. I know there’s joy at the other end, at the finish line.”

While Lyles and Richardson might grab the initial headlines with the finals on Saturday for the women and Sunday for the men, there will be a huge array of talent on show in the French capital.

Sweden’s pole vault king Armand “Mondo” Duplantis will seek to push his own limits for victory with a potential tilt at a 10th consecutive world record, while two of the most mouth-watering events are in the same discipline: the 400m hurdles.

Three years ago in Tokyo, the hurdles produced two of the most astonishing races ever run in Olympic history, made all the more remarkable as they were in a spectator-less stadium.