Noah Lyles wins again at track trials; Sha’Carri Richardson falls a spot short

Another surprise awaited Lyles in the homestretch of his signature race: Somebody kept pace with him. Lyles frequently turns the final portion of a 200-meter race into a coronation. At the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, he needed all of his best-in-the-world speed to fend off highly accomplished, perpetually overlooked Kenny Bednarek.

His closing push allowed him to hold off Bednarek, 19.53 seconds to 19.59, and break Michael Johnson’s meet record (19.66). Bednarek, the Tokyo Olympics silver medalist who also finished second to Lyles in the 100 at these trials, had run a half-lap faster than all but nine men who ever lived. His only problem was that one of them was running two lanes to his left.

“I felt like I was winning,” Bednarek said. “I pretty much just tightened at the end. That’s pretty much the only reason I got beat. I just tightened at the end. Just make sure nothing tightens up, and I’ll get the win next time. He got the better of me for this race. What matters is just getting him at the Olympics.”

“After we came off the turn, I was like: ‘All right, don’t panic,’” Lyles said. “‘I’ve been here many times before. We’re gonna get to the last 80. He’s gonna fall, and I’m gonna get faster.’ And that’s what happened.”

Typically exuberant if discussing his breakfast order, Lyles walked slowly after crossing the finish line, pausing before he raised his arms and smiled. He hugged long jump champion Tara Davis-Woodhall, knocking her celebratory cowboy hat off her head.

“When it comes to the 200, it’s harder and harder for me to celebrate,” Lyles said. “I’m not trying to take it for granted, because it’s my favorite race. But as the times get faster and faster, sometimes I can even say I take 19.5 for granted.”

Lyles sealed his chance of a triple gold medal attempt — or quadruple if he can talk his way onto the 4×400 relay — at next month’s Paris Olympics, an opportunity Richardson could not seize. She finished fourth in the women’s 200 final, upset by a party crasher from Claremont, Calif., by way of the University of Iowa, way out in Lane 9.

Blind to her competitors for the entire race, Brittany Brown stormed into her first Olympics and stole a spot widely assumed to be Richardson’s with the race of her life at 29, a 21.90-second personal best that gave her the silver medal and a ticket to Paris. Brown won silver at the 2019 world championships and made the U.S. 100-meter team at last summer’s worlds. On Saturday, she ran her way into the Olympics; Thomas finished in 21.81.

Despite her dominance in the 100, Richardson entered the trials as far from a lock to make the 200 team. The first two rounds, though, changed that perception. Richardson finished in 21.92 and 21.99 seconds, cruising into the finish line both times. After the semifinals, Richardson danced and smiled.

Richardson slowed before the line again in the final but only in recognition that she would not make the podium. She finished in 22.16. She patted Thomas on the arm and walked to embrace Brown. Richardson smiled and blew a kiss to her family as she walked off the track. She declined to speak with reporters.

After a suspension for a positive marijuana test cost her an Olympic chance in 2021, Richardson will enter Paris as the favorite at 100 meters and a presumptive choice for the 4×100 relay. But she will not have the chance at an individual double gold.

Lyles has not lost a 200 since the Tokyo Olympics final, a streak he stretched to 25 races Saturday. Lyles has not forgotten his last loss. Lyles entered Tokyo after a turbulent year in which he suffered depression, then came off his anti-depressants because he believed they affected his training. He called the bronze medal he won “boring” before a tearful outpouring of emotion.

Lyles reconciled the turmoil. He came out the other side of his mental health struggle. He won four world championships between 2022 and 2023 and asserted himself as the world’s best sprinter. The bronze medal still stings.

“I don’t feel different about it,” Lyles said earlier in the week. “I don’t like that thing. But I think by not liking it, it gives me the fire to keep going and keep pressing. Every time I turn around I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m doing enough.’ Then I turn around and look at the medal — ‘All right, back to work.’”

A day earlier, Lyles primed Hayward Field to expect a massive final. An illegal wind disqualified the time from official records, but Lyles finished a semifinal in which he slowed before the line in 19.60 seconds, a time only eight other men have officially beaten.

Erriyon Knighton, 20, made his second Olympic team three years after he became the youngest American male track and field Olympian since 1964. Knighton competed less than two weeks after an independent arbitrator’s ruling lifted a provisional suspension handed down after he tested positive for trenbolone, an anabolic steroid, on March 26. The arbitrator agreed with Knighton’s argument that he had consumed contaminated meat and had not taken a drug to improve performance.

“In my heart, I never did nothing wrong,” Knighton said. “I’ve always been a good, nice, clean athlete. To be able to run, this being my first meet back out, it’s kind of a relief I made the team.”

Knighton finished third Saturday in 19.77 seconds, 0.12 ahead of hard-luck Christian Coleman, who also finished fourth in the 100.

Thomas won as the favorite, a flip from her underdog starburst three years. She won the 2021 trials in 21.61 seconds, which at the time made her the second-fastest woman ever at 200 meters. The race skyrocketed Thomas into the upper echelon of U.S. track and changed the way she viewed herself. In Tokyo, Thomas won a bronze medal in the 200 and ran on the silver medal-winning 4×100 relay team.

“It was definitely very different,” Thomas said. “Last time, I was excited to be here. I was definitely nervous, but it was a little more fun in that way. No, it’s like I have no choice to advance to another round. It’s definitely added pressure.”

Thomas, a leading woman of American sprinting, and Brown will be accompanied by a burgeoning star. McKenzie Long won triple NCAA championships for Mississippi — in the 100, 200 and 4×100 relay — a month ago, announcing herself as a future star and a dark-horse Olympic medal contender with a 21.83-second 200. Though she missed the 100-meter final earlier at the trials, she sprinted her way to Paris on Saturday in 21.91.

Long emerged in the wake of personal tragedy. Long’s mother, Tara Jones, died in February after a heart attack at 45. Jones had been deeply involved in Long’s track career. At the NCAA championships, Long kept wanting to call her mother. She listens to the playlist her mother used to play while she worked out: “DON’T BE A LAZY B.”

Before the race, Richardson, whose biological mother died before the 2021 trials, embraced Long and told her, “I understand what you’re going through.”

“I really wish she could see me in my pro uniform,” Long said earlier in the week, pausing to gather herself. “I don’t want to stop including her in this track world. I want to include her in every way possible. That’s what keeps me going. That’s what keeps me motivated.”

Weini Kelati captured the 10,000 title with an unfathomable beginning. In 2014, at 17, Kelati ran for Eritrea, where she was born and grew up, in a youth world championship in Eugene. She called her family, told them she would not be returning home and defected to the United States, moving in with a relative in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

Kelati became a star at Heritage High and an NCAA national champion at New Mexico. She acquired her U.S. citizenship in the nick of time to compete at the 2021 Olympic trials but failed to finish the race, exhausted from the bureaucratic tangle and oppressive heat.

Ten years after her arrival in Eugene, Kelati walked to the starting line for her second trials. At 27, she stayed near the front for 7,000 meters, then surged to the lead. A pack of three broke from the pack. In the last 100 meters, Kelati sprinted past Parker Valby and Karissa Schweizer to finish first in 31:41.07.