But in a dramatic turnaround during the last 70 meters, Lyles surged ahead, overtaking Thompson who had been leading. He thrust his torso over the finish line just before the Jamaican.
After the race, as they awaited the official results, many thought Thompson had secured the victory, a sentiment shared by Lyles himself, who believed he might have managed bronze at best. "To be honest, I didn't know if I had it. I leaned but I didn't know I had it," Lyles confessed to SportsMax TV.
"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.'", reports the Mirror US . After a quick review, it was confirmed that Lyles had won, his torso crossing the finish line before Thompson's. The race was so close that officials had to examine multiple angles to confirm that Lyles' torso crossed the finish line first.
At the end of the review, it was noted that Lyles was about 5,000ths of a second faster than Thompson, marking one of the closest finishes in Olympic history. While Lyles has every reason to celebrate his win, his partner, Junelle Bromfield, has outdone him.
Bromfield, a 26-year-old Jamaican track star, bagged a bronze medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The pair first met in 2017, but as Lyles confessed on the "Fast Lane Lifestyle" podcast , their first date "just didn't click."
"It was like, 'No, let's just be friends," Lyles said at the time [h/t NBC.com]. "We both knew that we liked each other, but she could never get a day off from MVP [Track Club] to come visit."
The two went their separate ways before reuniting in Tokyo in 2021. It was there that Bromfield won a bronze medal for Jamaica in the 4x400-meter relay.
After reconnecting in Japan, Lyles and Bromfield even started dating. Despite competing at the highest level, they keep their sporting lives separate from their personal life.
For all the latest news straight to your inbox, sign up for our FREE newsletters here .
"Even before we started dating, we had a good balance," the American stated. "We'd show up to quite a few track meets that we were both at, and we weren't dating at the time, but nobody would know that we knew each other. ... We have that mental space to be able to share with each other and continuously feed to each other."
For the latest local news and features on Irish America, visit our homepage here .
Most Popular
Comments / 0