Figuring out how fast Noah Lyles can run requires a bit of analysis, as many fans want to know his top speed after he won the 100-meter dash at the 2024 Paris Olympics. As some sports viewers of track and field athletics might expect, Lyles was not as quick off the starting block as his competitors, but his ability to reach a high top speed and sustain it is what makes him “the fastest man” at this Olympics. That’s what allowed him to win over Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by mere fractions of a second. Here is a breakdown of Noah Lyles’ highest speed in mph.
How fast is Noah Lyles top speed?
Noah Lyles reached a top speed of 27.09 mph (or 43.6 km/h) for his 9.79-second run that won the gold medal at the 2024 Olympic Games. This was just five hundredths of a second faster than Thompson’s time.
This calculation is based on graphics made by Intel, as described in a post on X by two-time Olympic decathlon champion Ashton Eaton, who used to work at the company. The series of shots show the top speed of each competitor of the 100-meter sprint at various distances in the race, revealing in the last graphic that Lyles achieved the 43.6 km/h top speed.
That’s only 0.4 km/h above Thompson’s top speed, but that was enough to overcome his comparatively slow reaction time off the block. Lyles was tied last in start reaction times at 0.178 seconds, compared to his compatriot Fred Kerley at 0.108 seconds who won the bronze.
The New York Times calculated Lyles’ top speed at a little higher at 27.84 mph, though this calculation excludes the first two seconds of the race where the sprinters are accelerating. Interestingly, their analysis shows that Letsile Tebogo of Botswana had a higher top speed at 27.92 mph, though his overall average speed was still lower at 25.46 mph compared to Lyles’ 25.73 mph.
Lyles, in his signature necklace, hopes to appear in the 200m sprint final as well, an event where he’s even stronger than the 100m. So it’s possible that he might run even faster at this event and achieve a higher top speed.
