The Olympic Games Paris 2024 have come to an end and Mondo deservedly got a gold medal for helping produce the plethora of stunning performances on its athletics track in the Stade de France.
No less than three world records were set on the Mondotrack™ with Ellipse Impulse Technology athletics track, taking the tally of athletics world records on Mondo tracks to well past the 300 mark.
Fourteen Olympic records and 21 area records were also set during the course of the athletics programme at Paris 2024
However, one of the events that everyone is still talking about and will live long in the memory is the men’s 100m athletics competition.
It wasn’t just as case of one man dominating the competition – think Mondo Duplantis and his world record leap of 6.25m in the pole vault – the 100m final produced an unprecedented depth of superb performances across the whole field.
It has already been dubbed by many as the “the greatest 100m race of all time”.
Never had all eight men in a 100m race dipped below 10 seconds, the benchmark of international sprinting excellence.
USA’s Noah Lyles cemented his legacy as one of the greatest sprinters of all time when winning in 9.79 but, as he crossed the line having come back from being in last place 40 metres into the race, no one was truly certain that he’d won.
Most commentators exclaimed that the race was too close to call and held their breath for the verdict.
For agonising seconds, no one could confirm the outcome but eventually Lyles was proclaimed the champion of the blue riband event.
The American triumphed by just five milliseconds from Jamaica’s silver medallist Kishane Thompson who, in the results, was given the same time as his rival for the mantle of being called of the world’s fastest human.
Behind the leading pair, USA’s former 100m world champion Fred Kerley got the bronze in 9.81,
Further down the field, the times posted were the best ever for fourth to eighth place.
Akani Simbine finished off the podium, coming home immediately behind the trio of medallists, but improved his South African national record to 9.82, 0.05 faster than any other sprinter had ever finished in that position and a time that would have sufficed for gold at many other global championships.
Down in eighth and last place, Jamaica’s Oblique Seville clocked 9.91, 0.09 quicker than anyone had ever run before to bring up the rear of a 100m race.
Lyles’s place in the history of sprinting is assured after Paris 2024 and so too is the Mondotrack™ with Ellipse Impulse Technology athletics track that helped produce the most thrilling and quickest 100m race in athletics since artificial track surfaces were invented.