Olympic track and field trials results: Noah Lyles wins 100; Quincy Wilson advances -

EUGENE, Ore. — For the second straight night at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, Noah Lyles walked into Hayward Field with a silver briefcase. On Sunday night, though, he let Snoop Dogg carry it for him. The rapper, here for an NBC promotion, met Lyles on Saturday. Lyles asked if he would accompany him into the stadium.

“Fa sho,” Snoop Dogg replied.

“You mind holding the briefcase?” Lyles asked.

“I got you,” Snoop Dogg told him.

In they walked, cameras capturing every step, every smile and every thread of Lyles’s navy Gucci suit. The briefcase contained an all-red speedsuit — “my favorite color to race in,” Lyles said.

Lyles takes a two-pronged approach to his track ambitions. He wants to win gold medal, and he wants to transcend the sport. The latter will require him to dominate at 100 meters, his sport’s marquee event, as he has in his bread-and-butter 200 meters. Lyles knows how to deliver a show, and he proved again he can deliver on the track when it counts most.

At sunset under a bluebell sky, Lyles rocketed through the cool air and proved again he is the fastest man in America. Lyles stormed to the national championship in 9.83 seconds, tying his personal best. He raised his right arm as he crossed the line ahead of second-place Kenny Bednarek (9.87), the Olympic silver medalist at 200 meters in Tokyo in 2021, and third-place finisher Fred Kerley (9.88), the 2022 world champion.

“All I got to do is be me,” Lyles said. “I constantly tell kids all the time, ‘Be yourself.’ If people see me as being corny, shoot, I’m corny. But guess what? I’m winning while being corny.”

Lyles will head to the Paris Olympics as the unquestioned world’s fastest man even before he has run the 200 meters, his best event. He won the 100 meters, the 200 meters and the 4x100 relay at the world championships in Budapest last summer, and he intends to match that feat in Paris. He took a decisive first step Sunday night.

“Budapest,” Lyles’s coach Lance Brauman said, “was just kind of a dress rehearsal.”

It is just about impossible to upstage Lyles on the track, but 16-year-old Bullis School sensation Quincy Wilson nearly did. Wilson advanced to Monday’s 400-meter final with his second historic performance in three days. He broke a 42-year-old high school record Friday, and it lasted all of two days. He ran once around the Hayward Field track in 44.59 seconds — 0.07 seconds faster than he did in his opening round.

“It’s one of the happiest days of my life,” Wilson said.

Day 3 of the trials also included a fascinating women’s hammer throw champion, a defiant pole vault champion, a women’s 400-meter upset winner in Kendall Ellis and a rollicking women’s 800-meter semifinal.

Lyles, as always, commanded the crowd’s attention. He bounded down the track after he was introduced, waving his arms and asking the crowd for more noise. Though he has thoroughly conquered the sprinting world, Lyles had not dominated at the U.S. trials. Three years ago, Lyles’s training was derailed as he publicly battled depression that set in during the pandemic. He entered the 100 meters only to prep for the 200 — Brauman said he considered not letting Lyles run once he made the final.

“It’s a completely different year,” Lyles said. “One, I’m not depressed. So that helps. Two, I feel like I’ve built off such an amazing year.”

Lyles does not possess global dominion over the 100 the way he does the 200, but he is showing signs he soon will and might already domestically. Lyles established himself years ago as the fastest man on the planet at top speed. Mediocre starts prevented him from breaking into the top echelon of the 100. Conventional wisdom among sprinting cognoscenti held that if Lyles developed even an average start, he could not be touched.

Lyles has developed an average start — and it’s starting to be much more than that. He and Brauman have focused on perfecting his starting form and adding power through heavier, more intense weight training. “If you look at him, you can tell he’s a different-looking body than he has been in the past,” Brauman said. With his form, Lyles focuses on creating the proper angles with his legs, moving his feet out of the blocks as if dragging his toes on the ground.

At the 60-meter indoor national championship in February, Lyles edged Christian Coleman, widely regarded as one of the best starters of all time, for the title by running 6.43 seconds, a time bettered by only nine men ever.

In the days before trials, Brauman told Lyles: “You’re a 6.43 runner now. You need to run like one.”

“You got it, Coach,” Lyles replied.

In Saturday’s opening round, Lyles blasted out of the blocks quick enough to lead at the 30-meter mark, and he won in 9.92 seconds despite slowing down 40 meters shy of the tape.

“Every time I did a block start, there wasn’t a lot of thinking — it was kind of just doing,” Lyles said. “It was a lot closer to how I feel in the 200, which is what I’ve been waiting to feel for a very long time now. Every time I get that feeling, it makes the race that much more confident.”

In the final, Lyles was barely challenged. He ran neck-and-neck at the lead, and with 20 meters left he surged past Bednarek, Kerley and fourth-place finisher Coleman (9.93).

“Every step I took, it felt correct,” Lyles said. “Every step I took felt more powerful than the last. I’m like, ‘I got this race.’ I told myself I wasn’t going to ease up at the end, but I definitely eased up just to do a celebration. Next time I run, no celebrations.”

There is a difference, as Lyles’s mother, Keisha Caine Bishop, once said, between “track famous and regular famous.” Dominating the 200 made Lyles track famous. Winning an Olympic gold medal in the 100, the marquee event that confers the title of Fastest Man in the World, could make him regular famous.

Another sprinter from the D.C. area is joining him. Wilson stunned Hayward Field in his opening round by blazing 400 meters in 44.66 seconds, the second-fastest time in any heat and an under-18 world record. The race stamped him as a legitimate threat to make the Olympics but also raised a question: Could a 16-year-old maintain that performance for three rounds at a grueling distance?

Sprinting in a lavender uniform, Wilson provided an emphatic answer. He finished third in his heat behind veterans Bryce Deadmon and Vernon Norwood, but Wilson improved on his new high school record, lowering it to 44.59.

“That’s 42 years of nobody being able to break that record, and I broke it twice in two days,” Wilson said. “It means a lot to me because it means my hard work is paying off.”

Wilson came around the final turn in fifth place, seemingly in trouble. He sprinted the final 100 meters in 12.06 seconds and qualified comfortably on time. As he walked off the track, he held an index finger aloft.

“All I’m doing is heart,” he said. “Someone that’s 16 years old, they’re most likely to get scared when they go into the big competitors. Vernon, he’s 32 years old. I’m half his age. I’m just running for my life when I’m out there. The race plan went out the window.”

Annette Echikunwoke’s first hammer throw flew 74.68 meters (245 feet) and held up as the winner. Echikunwoke, a 27-year-old who works a full-time marketing job in Cincinnati, had made her second Olympics, but she is set to compete for the first time.

In 2020, Echikunwoke competed for Nigeria, her mother’s home country, and qualified for the Tokyo Games. She never made it to Japan. The Nigerian Olympic Committee neglected to set up drug tests and whereabouts checks for 10 athletes, including Echikunwoke. Even though they were not accused of wrongdoing, all 10 athletes were disqualified owing to the NOC’s negligence.

“It was definitely emotional in 2021, but I just believed I am supposed to be where I’m supposed to be,” Echikunwoke said. “It’s super exciting. I’m elated.”

Sam Kendricks captured his seventh pole vault national championship by clearing 5.92 meters (19 feet 5 inches) on his second attempt. After Friday’s qualifying round, Kendricks said he would consider turning down an Olympic berth because he remains angry about being disallowed from competing at the Tokyo Olympics following a positive coronavirus test. “I hate the Olympics,” Kendricks said then. But Kendricks is an all-time U.S. pole vault force, and his performance gave him a decision to make: Despite leftover animus and his belief the Olympics are overly celebrated, Kendricks said he definitely would compete in Paris.

The wildest race of the night came from an unassuming place. In the first 800-meter semifinal for the women, LSU rising senior Michaela Rose set a wicked pace and surged about 20 meters ahead of a field that including reigning Olympic gold medalist Athing Mu. As Rose faded down the stretch, Mu and Kate Grace closed the distance.

Mu eked past Rose on the outside just before the finish line and won in 1:58.84 in just her second race all year as she recovers from a hamstring injury. Grace passed Rose on the inside and edged her at the line. As all three runners leaned at the finish, Rose’s elbow smacked Grace and sent Grace flying over the rail. Her left shoulder smashed into the clock stanchion.

“I hope I didn’t shove her,” Rose said. “I saw she was on the ground and hit it pretty hard. She seemed fine. She’s a tough cookie.”

Grace had no issues with Rose. “Everything was honest,” she said. “Probably a little tired, and there was a lot of us trying to get to the line.” Speaking with reporters afterward, Grace showed bloody scrapes on her legs, arms and hip but shrugged off any impact the spill would have on her in Monday’s final.

“I didn’t hit my head or anything,” Grace said. “The head is what you care about the most.”

As Grace rolled on the ground, Rose asked her, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Grace replied. “Good job. I hope you make it to the finals.”

Two races later, Rose learned her 1:59.00 had held up — she would run in the final.

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