COVID-stricken Noah Lyles collapses after getting bronze

Noah Lyles tests positive for COVID-19, finishes third in the 200m Olympic final in Paris.

The first sign of trouble Thursday (August 8, 2024) night came when Noah Lyles started rounding the curve in the Olympic final of the 200 meters — the sprint that has always been his best race.

Normally at the curve, Lyles starts making up ground, then pulling away from what have been — for the last three years — game but overmatched contenders.

This time, his momentum stalled. Instead of Lyles reeling in the runner two lanes to his right, Letsile Tebogo of Botswana, Tebogo pulled farther away. The American favourite, who had gone three years without losing in the 200, laboured into the finish and collapsed onto the track after ending up in third.

The insidious specter of COVID, the killer virus that upended the globe four years ago and made the last Olympics part of its collateral damage, struck at the Paris Games, too.

In a bracing reminder that the virus is still very much a factor, even if its deadly fingerprint has been blunted, the world's marquee sprinter, racing on the world's biggest sports stage, revealed he had tested positive two days before his shocking, but now not-inexplicable, bronze-medal finish in the 200m.

“I still wanted to run,” Lyles said, wearing a mask, as he spoke to reporters, whose mere congregation in a jam-packed scrum underneath the stadium was unthinkable three years ago at the delayed Tokyo Games. “They said it was possible.” With the blessing of officials at the USA Track and Field and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, who said they followed protocol, Lyles did run.

He finished in 19.70. That was 0.39 off his personal-best, and 0.24 behind the 21-year-old Tebogo. Lyles' U.S. teammate Kenny Bednarek finished second, marking the second straight Olympics in which he and Lyles finished 2-3.