Breaking news:Noah Lyles did not break the line first but won…

In the most thrilling men’s 100-meter final ever, Noah Lyles won the gold medal in spite of Kishane Thompson’s foot touching the finish line first. The winner of a race is determined by whose chest passes through the tape first. American Lyles won by the incredibly narrow margin of just 0.005 seconds, finishing last after 30 meters. This is the method he used.

Lyles, predictably, had made the most eye-catching of arrivals, sprinting down as far as the 40m line when he was announced into the stadium. Plenty of people watching wondered if he should conserve some energy but, clearly wanting to be the showman that the men’s 100m has lacked ever since Usain Bolt, he continued his high-energy antics.

The wait between the athletes arriving out on the track and the actual start of the race felt interminable. Lengthy introductions, booming music, a spectacular light show, darkness and then a longer than anticipated wait for the bulbs inside the Stade de France to reach optimal brightness. That was even before the eight athletes had been called to their blocks to greet the silence that accompanied the starter’s orders

With Lyles’s rivals having warmed themselves up with such vigour and precision on a separate track just outside the Stade de France, there was a theory that the wait might have particularly affected the two Jamaican sprinters, Oblique Seville and Thompson. They had looked capable of running so much faster in the heats and, while nerves may also have been a factor, they looked tight by comparison.

Lyles has never been a fast starter and, true to form, his reaction time from when the gun sounded and his feet actually left the blocks was the joint slowest in the entire field at 0.178sec. Thompson was crucially not much faster, ensuring that Fred Kerley, who was largely unfancied for gold, took an instant lead.

Sprinters then vary greatly in how long they keep their heads down but this next part of the race was excellent for Thompson who, by 30m, had taken the lead and was moving faster than anyone at 40.6km per hour. Lyles, who was now just touching that same speed, had taken much longer to get there and was actually still last out of all eight runners even at 30m.