Running on empty: Lyles was wrong to race with Covid-19

You’d have to be a monster not to feel some sympathy at the predicament the American athlete Noah Lyles faced on Tuesday at the Paris Olympics when he tested positive for our old and persistent friend, Covid-19.

- SEAN O'GRADY

A couple of days later he was due to race in the men’s 200m final. He had a chance of winning. Chances like that don’t come around all that often (every four years, to be precise). He could, if all had gone well, have emulated Usain Bolt by winning the 100m and 200m at the same Olympics.

The temptation to go ahead and hope for the best was clearly irresistible, and his coach agreed. No rules were broken, but after he secured the bronze medal he was exhausted, plainly ill, attended to by medics, and taken from the track in a wheelchair.

Lyles and his team broke no rules, but in my opinion he did not do the right thing. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, during the pandemic, he would have been obliged to self-isolate and miss the race. This time there are no such restrictions, but he was still going around spreading the virus and endangering the health of others.