Fast-rising sprinter Lyles focused on the maths

PARIS: “It’s all about the execution,” is a post-race phrase much heard and repeated by athletes in the bowels of stadiums across the world.

Employing the same, meticulous approach to race day as training is an art form given the extra pressure of putting into practice a performance honed during long hours at an anonymous track without the watchful eyes of thousands of spectators.

New kid on the block Noah Lyles likened sprinting to a maths equation: one simple error and the moment is lost. “To run fast, you have to make sure you do the exact right thing every time,” the 22-year-old said after winning the 200m at Saturday’s Diamond League in Paris in a scintillating 19.65 seconds.

“It’s like a maths equation. You can’t get the maths equation by messing up one thing, it’s all over - it’s just like track, if you mess up in one part, the race is going to go to someone else.”

Lyles has positioned himself as one of the pretenders to fill the large footprints left by now-retired Jamaican legend Usain Bolt, himself an advocate of the beauty of execution in his halcyon days on the track when he dominated sprinting. Lyles’ 19.65sec in Paris has only been bettered by four other sprinters: the American quartet of Walter Dix, Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay and Xavier Carter.