Kenny says, “ Never seen favoritism like this on a global scale.”

Yeah that was a bit strange from Kenny. Perhaps he meant they gave Lyles the correct lane but based on his semi win he should have been given one of the favored outside lanes. It has been corrected now, but Lyles is screwed. We know he cannot run from an inside lane. I am going to go with Tebogo for the win

1. Tebego

2. Bednarek

3. Lyles

Lyles will become the bronze king with his favored event and with all the boasting.

It's not about his competitors it's the gentleness of the outside lanes.

That was why Bednarek protested. Because Ogando was given lane 8 but didn't win his semi while Kenny was given lane 4. It should never have happened. But it did. The change was made after Kenny protested.

Made the NY post.

nypost.com

US sprinter Kenny Bednarek accuses Olympics officials of ‘favoritism’ over lane assignment

@nypost

American sprinter Kenny Bednarek is accusing the Olympics of “favoritism” for the starting order of the Men’s 200m final at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Open link

You can run faster with a less aggressive curve near the outside. You just want one or two people on your outside so you can still chase them down the first 100 meters.

But if you are like Van Niekirk, you don't need to chase. He set the WR with no one outside him. The outside lane should be the best, from a physics perspective

I thought we had unanimously agreed that KennyB was reserved exclusively for Kenenisa Bekele

So, Lyles will become Jakob losing in his favorite event and winning gold in his secondary event.

400m ain’t 200m

Exactly! And this is exacerbated indoors, which is why you want lane 6 on a 6-lane track.

The wild thing is that that Women's 4x100m record was set out of lane 1. Given this and WVN's WR out of lane 8, I tell myself not to stress too much about lane assignments.

Right but the way he made it sound was that Lyles was getting some massive "favoritism" (because clearly nobody is getting it other than him) - and Lyles was always in his correct lane. So he was right to protest and get the lane he deserves, the twitter post was kind of overly-dramatic.

Guess no 4 gold medals for lolz.

"Better luck next year."

Oh the drama! Lyles will milk this. He wasn’t a 100% but 19.4 is tough to beat. He ran his mouth about people being depressed coming off the curve. Ouch, karma.

Nice

Covid-positive athletes should run in Lane 1 with Lane 2 open.

I was surprised he was allowed to compete. A lot changes in 3 years at Tokyo !

Congrats you got it Right!

Lanes 5-8 are "preferred" and given, supposedly at random, to the highest ranked. I am pretty sure ranking is based on semi performances. Kenny won his heat w/ 2nd fastest time, so definitely got hosed and was right to complain. Lyles clearly belonged in one of the 4 preferred lane as 3rd fastest and fastest 2nd place finisher. Ogando was 2nd in his heat and slower than Lyles, so he's the one who didn't belong, which they fixed (after protest). Ogando was 1 ms faster than Knighton, who got precedence for winning his heat.

So the officials didn't actually show favoritism to Lyles, and favoritism to Ogando doesn't really make sense. My speculation is that Kenny doesn't think it's a coincidence that the screw up affected him and not Lyles instead, which is hard to prove or disprove.

Whatever the case, I'm glad Kenny stood up for himself and that he got silver in a great race. It's hard to judge Noah's result since it's impossible to know how sick he was (seemed pretty sick), but impressive to get a medal anyhow.

Yes a lot has changed. He was at least being semi responsible masking up indoors and with N95 for the interview. Risk of outdoor transmission is pretty low. I hope he followed whatever rules are in place. The fact that masked officials were tending to him during and after the interview makes me think he was.

Lyles plan is working. He’s beginning to live in a lot of opponents head before the race. When that happens they’re not thinking about how they practiced racing they’re already thinking about losing to Lyles. Their focus is already defeated.