‘Lyle has a loose mouth’

Zharnel Hughes and Noah Lyles. Pics/Getty Images

US sprint star Noah Lyles has a last competitive track outing at Saturday's London Diamond League before heading across the English Channel to the Paris Olympics.

Lyles, who won the 100m and 200m titles at last year's world championships in Budapest, will run the shorter sprint in the British capital in his continuing bid to set himself up as the true successor to now-retired legend Usain Bolt.

Also read: Usain Bolt MPH: The fastest man alive

But the American will be up against Britain's Anguilla-born Zharnel Hughes, who won bronze behind him in Hungary, and the dangerous duo of world silver medallist Letsile Tebago of Botswana and South Africa's Akani Simbine.

"I'm looking forward to London, I feel it's going to be special," said Hughes, who was disqualified from the 100m final at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics won by Italy's Marcell Jacobs.

"The fact it's the last Diamond League before the Olympic Games, it's going to be stacked and I want to lay something down there."

Hughes co-stars alongside Lyles in the Netflix docu-series Sprint, but said he hadn't realised how much his US rival talked about him.

‘I realise he said a lot'

"I didn't really know he said that much about me until I saw the preview and I realise he said a lot. I will see him in London and we'll meet there - but I'll talk with the spikes. He just has a loose mouth, but I guess that's how he gets his confidence. At the end of the day he's performing as well, so I have to give him credit," said Hughes.

"I was like, ‘this guy can talk!' I knew he talked, but I didn't know he talked that much. Obviously me being a competitor, it raised all the red in me. I was like, ‘this guy, man! Shut up.'

Perfect timing

"My girlfriend said ‘don't try to let it get to your head. He's saying these things so you guys can be thrown off psychologically'. So for me I use that desire, that red in me, and I try to put it out on the track. I'm looking forward to actually sitting down and hearing all the things that he had to say. It's just the perfect timing leading up to the Olympic Games."

Apart from Hughes, British interest will come from the Carl Lewis-coached Louie Hinchliffe, who won the 100m at the highly competitive NCAA championships in a personal best of 9.95sec before snatching the British title too.

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