Lyles, Richardson headline array of track talent at Paris Olympics

PARIS - Brash, brazen, brilliant. American sprint duo Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson will look to live up to their billing as Olympic 100m favourites when the track and field programme at the Paris Games starts on Friday.

The reigning world champions are the stars of a recently-released Netflix docuseries entitled "Sprint", giving an up-close and personal view into their lives on and off the track.

At the Stade de France - with those cameras still turning for season two - the debate will be whether Lyles, who won three golds at last year’s Budapest world championships, can beat defending champion Marcell Jacobs of Italy and go on to be crowned as the rightful successor to sprint king Usain Bolt.

The other hot topic is whether Richardson can hold off Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the ageing five-time world 100m champion seeking her third Olympic gold in the discipline.

For both Americans, it is a question of redemption.

Lyles maintains that the 200m bronze he won at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics "still burns a hole" in his chest.

Richardson didn’t even make the plane for Japan after being banned for taking marijuana.

"I know exactly where I am ahead of Paris," said Lyles, who arrived in Paris after setting a personal best of 9.81sec at the London Diamond League.

"The more eyes on me, the better I perform, or at least that's what my therapist says. When the TV cameras are on me and people are there, I am not losing."

Richardson, seeking to become the first US woman to win an Olympic 100m title since Gail Devers in 1996, added: "When I get on the blocks, it's about getting the job done. I know there's joy at the other end, at the finish line."

While Lyles and Richardson might grab the initial headlines with the finals on Saturday for the women and Sunday for the men, there will be a huge array of talent on show in the French capital.

Sweden’s pole vault king Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis will seek to push his own limits for victory with a potential tilt at a 10th consecutive world record, while two of the most mouth-watering events are in the same discipline: the 400m hurdles.

400M HURDLES BATTLES

Three years ago in Tokyo, the hurdles produced two of the most astonishing races ever run in Olympic history, made all the more remarkable as they were in a spectator-less stadium.

First up, Norway’s Karsten Warholm smashed his own world record by a staggering 0.76sec to win the men’s hurdles in 45.94sec.

Twenty-four hours later American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone did the impossible and improved her own world record by 0.44sec to 51.46sec.

The two hurdles race again promise to be cracking races in Paris, with Warholm under pressure from American Rai Benjamin and McLaughlin-Levrone from Dutchwoman Femke Bol.

The men and women’s 800m races also look likely to throw up two absolute must-see races, with two world records under threat, although athletes always stress that championship running is more about medals than re-writing record books.

Algerian Djamel Sedjati has his eyes on Kenyan David Rudisha’s 1:40.91, having gone third in the all-time list in a show of form on the Diamond League circuit this season.

In champion Athing Mu’s absence, Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson comes to Paris as the athlete to beat in the women's two-lap field, having run a life-time best of 1:54.61 in London two weeks ago to show she can upgrade her silver from Tokyo.

The time was the fastest run since the now-barred Caster Semenya in 2018, putting the Briton seventh on the all-time list and edging ever closer to the improbable 1:53.28 world record set by then-Czechoslovak Jarmila Kratochvilova 41 years ago.

The middle-distance events promise a number of top-level clashes, not least because the ever-unpredictable Sifan Hassan is following in the footsteps of Czech athlete Emil Zatopek by racing the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon.

In Tokyo she won the 5,000m/10,000m double and claimed bronze in the 1500m.

In Paris, the irrepressible Kenyan Faith Kipyegon will be gunning for a third successive Olympic title at 1500m.

The men’s 1500m offers one of the keenest rivalries on the circuit as British team captain Josh Kerr goes head-to-head once more with Jakob Ingebrigtsen.

Ingebrigtsen is the defending Olympic champion, but the Norwegian has twice been beaten to world gold since, by Jake Wightman in Eugene and then Kerr a year later in Budapest.

"If I don't get injured and I don't get sick, I think it's going to be a walk in the park," said the always-confident Ingebrigtsen, who will defend his 1500m title, as well as aiming for a distance double in the 5,000m.