Hughes bids to silence Lyles before Paris sprint showdown

ONE of the take-outs from Sprint, athletics’ and Netflix’s answer to Drive to Survive, is the confidence that exudes from every pore of Noah Lyles.

- Matt Majendie

It is an outlook that proves completely warranted, as the American backed up the bravado to seal the sprint double in the season finale at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest last summer.

Lyles likes to talk, and such chat has not gone unnoticed by another figure in the series, Britain’s Zharnel Hughes.

While Lyles, as ever, has been big and brash all season long, winning the double at the American trials, including matching his PB of 9.83seconds in the 100m, to set up the potential for a Budapest repeat at the Paris Olympics, Hughes is somewhat more underrated and under the radar.

And there is a telling moment after Hughes has won a Worlds medal where Lyles tells him to believe.

Hughes may have had limited running this season, particularly this season, where he has just one outing at a meagre 10.09secs, but he is adamant he is coming to take Lyles’s crown over both 100m and 200m and to silence him in the process.