Noah Lyles gets big LA Times feature and he talks BIG in it. Says he has plans for WR in both 100m and 200m

Bingo~~~~~~~~

Here we have a 9.7low at best 100m man, he can forget 9.57 that will never happen. And he will never run a sub 19,20 either, there is ony one Usain Bolt.

I don't think Bolt or Blake are necessarily the blueprint.

After the injury (and lets not forget there is a doping ban in his history), I don't think it's surprising Blake never regained the superhuman running he was managing at his quickest.

Bolt had achieved everything there was to achieve performance wise and was happiest just being the showman.

There have been plenty of sprinters who progress from the level they are at in their early 20s. I don't think its unrealistic to think Noah could be one of them

Says the guy who likely has the inane argument of how on Earth we can make track and field more marketable.

Your easy answer: Personality- of which Lyles has no shortage of.

Aren't you tired of the fake-stoic, unexcitable distance guys that all regurgitate the same stock response in interviews? Cmon

Sounds like that roid hubris he's got going.

Bolt was a freak of nature with that 6-5 stride who could get out like a 5-10 cat. Then ya add that unworldly speed endurance, he was still in his beginning to sustain phase while normal humans were decellerating. Hitting that max velocity/top end later than others he spent little time decellerating. A unique sprinter, actually a one of a kind, that is why none of us here will see his records broken.

Lyles is a great spriner obviously great at 9.7ish.

Okay then let's not make them the blueprint. What if I then told you that the average age of the athletes when setting the an all-time top 10 performance in BOTH the 100m and 200m was 24.4 years of age? And I'm happy to round that up to 25 because obviously these guys didn't magically run their PR's on their birthdays. But the point is statistically, it's more likely to set your PR's in the 100 and 200 at or before the age of 25. I don't even think anecdotally that's a controversial statement.

Yes Noah could be an outlier - but the true outliers to the above are Tyson Gay, Michael Johnson and Justin Gatlin who all set PR's in their late 20's and even 30's in the case of Gatlin but I'd be taking all that with a large grain of salt.

We can respectfully agree to disagree but I am going to stick with the narrative that if Lyles wants to seriously scare that WR, he's going to have to do it next season.

Lyles needs to work on his start and acceleration if he wants to improve his 100m time. No way he breaks 9.80 in the 100 when he can’t even break 6.50 in the 60. Bolt went through the 60m mark in his best races in the low 6.3s, Lyles has never, ever shown that kind of speed, his very best 60 is nearly a quarter of a second slower than Bolt. In fact nearly all the difference between Bolt’s 9.58 and Lyle’s 9.86 is in the first 60 meters.

Lyles got a boost this last summer from Adidas’ new super spikes, and clearly Knighton scared the crap out of him when he ran 19.49 early in the season which really lit a fire under Lyles. He’s not going to be able beat someone like Kerley or Jacobs in the 100 when he spots them .1-.2 seconds in the first 50m. If he’s serious about this he should spend an entire indoor season working on his 60 time, and maybe if he can get down to the mid 6.4s or faster he can start talking about 9.7s and faster for the 100.

This reminds me of when Marion Jones said she would get 5 gold medals. These lofty predictions never come to fruition.

Seems like Lyles obsesses about his bodily asymmetries just like me.