NBC's Leigh Diffey admits fault after erroneously calling Kishane Thompson as 100-meter winner over Noah Lyles

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As Noah Lyles crossed the finish line for the most important win of his career at the Paris Olympics, his home country was hearing a different story.

NBC's Leigh Diffey unintentionally added to the chaos of Sunday's 100-meter dash when he proclaimed Jamaica's Kishane Thompson had won and not Lyles, who had surged from last place to force a photo finish. As other announcers around the world, such as the BBC, remarked that they didn't know who won, Diffey took a different tack:

"There's an Olympic gold medal waiting for somebody, who wants it the most? Now Thompson starts to wind up. Kerley's going with him. This is close. Jamaica's going to do it! Kishane Thompson is a gold medalist!"

Thompson, of course, isn't a gold medalist. The photo at the finish line revealed Lyles' torso had crossed the finish line before Thompson's by a margin of five thousandths of a second.

One day later, Diffey issued a mea culpa on social media, admitting he erred by feeling confident enough to proclaim Thompson the winner and expressing his happiness of Lyles.

The Australian Diffey is an announcer who usually works in auto racing, but has been part of NBC's Olympic coverage since 2014.

To be fair to Diffey, he wasn't alone in thinking Thompson had won. Lyles himself thought Thompson had beaten him and even told him as much as they waited for the video board to show the winner:

"After the race, we were waiting for the names to pop up and I'm going to be honest, I came over, I was like 'I think you got the Olympics, dog.' He was out there in Lane 4 and I was in Lane 7 and I couldn't really see what was going on over there, so I just had to keep running like I was going to win it. Something said 'I need to lean' and I was like 'I'm gonna lean.'

Lyles also said he thought he would "really have to swallow my pride" at the end of the race.

Of course, Lyles was more focused on moving forward than looking at his competitors. Diffey had one of the best seats in the house, watched the pack of runners go by and thought the man in the bright yellow suit was the clear enough winner to say as much.

This stuff has happened before and will happen again as long as the Olympics are broadcast, but it's now an inextricable part of how Lyles' rise to the top of the track world will be remembered.