World Athletics chief and former Olympics hero Sebastian Coe has compared Noah Lyles to Usain Bolt - believing the American has been hugely influential to athletics in recent years.
Arguably the biggest sprinting star the sport has seen since Usain Bolt, with all eyes were on Lyles as he took to the world stage on Sunday, going on to win his first gold medal at the Olympics - winning in dramatic fashion by 0.005 in a photo finish.
As soon on Netflix' docu-series Sprint, Lyles' charisma is something that fans have been drawn to, with Coe believing him to have filled a void left after Bolt's retirement after the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
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Coe told reporters: "I have to be relatively agnostic, but if I'm wearing a promoter's hat, then him winning last night was important because he's now creating a narrative that is heading us back into the Usain Bolt territory.
"That is hugely important. Because he's a recognizable face. It's a face that I've now got young people talking about. And I know that not just from being in the stadium here or being in the athletics world.
"I know what they're talking about. I know friends of mine who've got young kids, they're now talking about Noah Lyles in the same breath as some of the highest profile sports men and women in the world."
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The marquee event of the Olympic games saw what will go down as one of the greatest of all-time, as Lyles and Jamaican competitor Kishane Thompson battled to an incredibly close finish - the tightest in 44 years. The competitiveness of the entire field meant just 0.03 seconds was the difference between gold and no medal at all, with just 0.12 seconds separating first place and last.
To the naked eye, it had looked like Thompson had won the race - with him looking to be in a celebratory mode with Lyles walking towards him.
"To be honest, I didn’t know if I had it. I leaned but I didn’t know I had it," Lyles told Jamaican broadcaster SportsMax TV after celebrating winning his first gold medal. Me and Kishane were at the end waiting for our names to come up and I came back and I said, ‘I’ll be honest, man, I think you got that one’. But my name came up and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m amazing’."
Lyles will also compete in the 200m this week, hoping to secure a second gold medal, while winning in the same race in the World Championships last year.
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