The race was so close that when it was over, seven of the eight sprinters saw “PHOTO” next to their name on the large scoreboard inside the Stade de France. The term indicates a closer inspection of the finish is required. In this case, the timing was extended to the thousandth of a second to determine the winner. Lyles finished in 9.784 seconds and Thompson in 9.789.
Photograph by Joe Ward
Ultimately, Lyles’s average speed of 25.7 m.p.h. was higher than that of any sprinter in the field.
Men’s 100-meter final results
1 Noah Lyles | 9.79s | 25.73mph | 27.84mph |
2 Kishane Thompson | 9.79s | 25.62mph | 27.51mph |
3 Fred Kerley | 9.81s | 25.52mph | 27.77mph |
4 Akani Simbine | 9.82s | 25.45mph | 27.30mph |
5 Lamont Marcell Jacobs | 9.85s | 25.40mph | 27.41mph |
6 Letsile Tebogo | 9.86s | 25.46mph | 27.92mph |
7 Kenneth Bednarek | 9.88s | 25.24mph | 27.28mph |
8 Oblique Seville | 9.91s | 25.05mph | 27.33mph |
Note: Maximum and average speed calculations exclude the first two seconds of the race.
Lyles overcame his slow start by outpacing Thompson late in the race. His closing speed over the final three seconds would be what separated him from Thompson.
How fast each medal winner ran compared with the average of all eight runners
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–1.5 mph
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Avg. speed
+0.5 mph
Avg. speed
Methodology
The Times analyzed photographs of the race that were captured every 100 milliseconds. Using a computational technology known as computer vision, the positions of the athletes were detected in each image. Speeds were then computed by combining the positions of the athletes and the timestamp of each photograph. The positions of the athletes were manually verified, and results were corroborated with official Olympic data feeds. The speed data displayed as dots on the image shows how fast the athletes are relative to each other in each photograph.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
