Leigh Diffey jumped the gun.
The NBC announcer shouted the wrong sprinter as the winner of the heavily anticipated men’s 100-meter dash finals at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Sunday.
American Noah Lyles came from behind after a slow start for a photo finish at the wire with Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
NOAH LYLES’ OLYMPIC DREAM COMES TRUE!
100M GOLD MEDALIST. #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/qR6bkXLHhE
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 4, 2024
It was unclear just watching who had won, but Diffey prematurely crowned Thompson the gold medalist.
Jamaica’s gonna do it,” Diffey said on the broadcast. “Kishane Thompson is a gold medalist.”
But Thompson had not yet been named the winner, and it took nearly 30 seconds after the finish before Lyles’ name popped on the scoreboard as the winner after a photo review and video replay.
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“To be honest, I just believe in myself,” Lyles said. “I’ve done worse and I’ve run faster 60s. Ah, dang. Dang, I’m amazing. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. I thought I was a little better than that. But that goes to prove that reaction times does not win races.”
He said he told Thompson after the race “‘Bro, I think you got that one.’ But then my name popped up and I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, amazing!’”
Lyles took off his name tag and raised it to the crowd in celebration.
“America, I told you I got this!” Lyles yelled into the camera.
Lyles beat Thompson by just five thousandths of a second.
“I thought I had [him] cleared,” Thompson said. “But I wasn’t sure. It was so close.”
American Fred Kerley took home the bronze medal.
Lyles, 27, became the first American to win the 100-meter dash since Justin Gatlin in 2004.
It marked Lyles’ first-ever gold medal, and his second Olympic medal overall.
He had previously won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the 2023 World Championships, and can now officially call himself the fastest man in the world.
He’s still set to compete in the 200-meter dash, which he gold in at the 2019, 2022 and 2023 World Championships, in addition to the 4 X 100 relay.
