NOAH LYLES IS NOT USAIN BOLT, BUT HE DID WIN THE WILDEST OF PHOTO FINISHES

He ached to showcase the Olympics for America, and he did his part, leading a mad rush of seven sprinters and winning the 100 by .005 seconds — which is behind Bolt’s world record but, hey, so what?

     He’s not remotely the “fastest man who ever lived,” as Howard Cosell said and Mike Tirico needn’t bother. To be historically specific, Noah Lyles produced a winning time of 9.784 seconds Sunday night, which ranks 36th in the 100 meters. Seeing Carl Lewis at the end of opening ceremonies fetched the past, when he joined epic Americans Jesse Owens and Bob Hayes and a name we take to our sprinting dreams, Usain Bolt.

     But please don’t assume Noah was running an Ark. He spoke boastfully when he arrived in Paris, declaring at a media conference, “Where’s the intro music?” He didn’t receive any tunes, so Lyles sang, “Duh duhduhduh da-duh! The champ is here!” He dared to paint “I-C-O-N” on his fingernails.

     What else should we call him after he won the wildest photo finish in the post-tech clock age? Only .09 separated Lyles from the seventh-place racer, and when everyone waited for results to formulate, he thought Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson had won. “We were waiting for the names to pop up, and I'm going to be honest, I came over to him and I was like, ‘I think you got that one, big dawg!’ ’’ Lyles said. “Something said I need to lean, and I was like, ‘I’m going to lean,’ because it's that type of race.”

     The technicians even posted “Photo” on the scoreboard. Maybe this wasn’t Owens in Berlin or Lewis in Los Angeles or Hayes from the Summer Games to the NFL. And this certainly wasn’t Bolt, the Jamaican madman, who dashed a nonsensical 9.58 in 2009 and 9.63 for more Olympic gold. But Lyles leaned to a conquest by .005 seconds. This was the man who said the other day, “To be honest, when Noah Lyles is being Noah Lyles, there’s nobody. I beat everybody else I touch.” This was the man who barked, “Everybody has their own vibe. I’m a showman. I almost feel like an artistic director. You have all these other athletes as stars, rock stars, popular wherever they go. Track and field needs to be the same. And I won’t be happy until I see that accomplished.” This was the man who said, “This is Noah Lyles, fastest man in the world, and we are out here in Paris getting ready to go on our tour of the world, introducing America to the Olympics.”

     Today, he has his own Eras Tour.

     “My name popped up and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, amazing,’ ’’ he said, giving the U.S. its first Olympic triumph since 2004, after which Justin Gatlin trashed himself with a doping mess after Ben Johnson lost his gold medal in Seoul. Lyles will carry on with a potential win in the 200 meters, which would make him a Paris legend, if not a world-record holder at the Stade de France.

     Even he knows the 100 doesn’t command television eyeballs as it once did. “I think the 400 hurdles, men and women, are trying to take it,” Lyles said. When Sha’Carri Richardson finished the women’s 100 with a silver — after a positive marijuana test knocked her out of the Tokyo Olympics blocks — America didn’t weep. Yet Lyles did post a recent shot on his YouTube account, believing today’s fastest man and woman should be valued as such, regardless of Bolt’s insane numbers.

     “I would like to address the comments surrounding the ‘fastest man’ title,” Lyles said. “The titles ‘fastest man’ and ‘fastest woman’ are awarded annually to the winners of the 100m at the World Championships. I won the men's 100m at the 2023 World Championships, and Sha'Carri won the women's. We do not intend to disrespect or discredit past records or times set in the new season. This is simply how the title is determined. I hope this clarifies the matter for those who had questions.”

     Well, it doesn’t. Yet he won anyway, by one of those fingernails. Weeks ago, Lyles spoke to his biomechanist, who said the difference between first place and second would be a margin between his index finger and thumb. “I can’t believe how right he was,” he said of Ralph Mann. It allowed him to embrace his new presence, after dealing with mental health issues three years ago.

     “I can finally say I’m showing up for an Olympic Games not depressed,” he said. “It feels amazing. A lot of joy. I can always think back to the last Olympics and be like: ‘No, this one is not the same.’ This one is way better, and I’m ready to show it. I’m a true believer that the moment isn’t bigger than me. The moment was made for me.”

     The moment was a tiny thread on his uniform, if that.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.