Noah Lyles and the Question of Sportsmanship
by Steve McGill
Sportsmanship matters. Let’s start with that. Character matters. Behaving in a manner that is respectful of one’s opponents and respectful of the sport matters. Emotions run high in the heat of competition, and we all enjoy, to varying degrees, trash talk between opponents that serves to heighten the intensity of a rivalry. Where to draw the line is a question with no clear answer. How much is too much? When is gloating appropriate and when is it not? When is a staredown appropriate and when is it not? When is physical aggression appropriate and when is it not? If we had ten track heads sitting in a room discussing this topic, I’m sure we’d get plenty of varying responses.
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This question has come up again because of the men’s 200 final at the USA National Championships. In a hotly contested race, Noah Lyles walked down Kenny Bednarek in the last 30 meters or so of the homestretch to win a very close race at the finish line. As Lyles leaned at the tape, he turned his head and mean-mugged Kung Fu Kenny as a way of letting him know who’s boss of the 200 meters. As he kept running, he kinda sorta drifted into Kenny’s lane, and Kenny gave him a two-handed push to move him out of the way. Noah turned around with a shocked expression on his face, then Kenny held out his hand to dap him up. Words were exchanged, they did dap each other up (although it wasn’t the friendliest of daps), then endured an awkward interview with Lewis Johnson.
Let’s talk about this incident, and what we think about it. I’ve heard some people say that it’s good for track, that heated rivalries and athletes not liking each other brings more attention to the sport and makes certain events (in this case, the men’s 200) must-see TV. When there are hostile rivalries among the best athletes in the same event, casual sports fans who don’t usually watch track will tune in to see what happens. That logic makes sense to a large degree. The beef between Lyles and Bednarek was a featured story on all sports news social media platforms. I saw it on Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports; even ESPN included it as a top headline on its app (website). Usually track news can only be found on track-specific sites like FloTrack, CitiusMag, etc. So we can be sure that when the World Championships come around, track fans and even casual sports fans will be locked in on the men’s 200 final, assuming both Lyles and Bednarek are in it.
But Lyles irks me. It’s kind of like Draymond Green in the NBA. It’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt, and it’s hard to really cheer for him like you want to, because dude keeps doing stuff that is out of pocket. This isn’t the first time he has stared down an opponent after walking him down at the line. He did the same thing to Erryion Knighton a few years ago at USAs. I don’t like it. I feel that it takes away from the performance itself. The man ran a beautiful race, a heroic race, the kind of race that blows your mind. Walking down one of the best sprinters in the world like that was insane. So why cheapen it with that corny-ass staredown? Respect your opponent; he brought out the best in you; you brought out the best in each other.
It’s different when you win by a sizable margin. At least to me it is. When Usain Bolt was running 9.58 and looking around to see where everybody else was, that was dynamic; that was electric. When you beat everybody by a country mile in a race so short, you have every right to prance and preen. But when you beat somebody by hundredths of a second, you have asserted dominance, you haven’t proven yourself to be hands-down a superior sprinter. I mean, I get it. I like the swagger. You can’t be a successful track and field athlete without having supreme confidence in yourself. It’s warfare out there. But I’m not a fan of disrespect. Lyles is a warrior; he trains hard and he rises to the occasion time and time again on the world’s biggest stages. His running form is beautiful. So I want to root for him. He just needs to stop with the corniness. He’s not Usain Bolt; he doesn’t have Bolt’s charisma nor Bolt’s speed.
Should Kenny have pushed Noah in the back like that? No is the short and obvious answer. It wasn’t cool, it was petty, it represented poor sportsmanship. But Kenny, I would argue, gets a pass. Why? Because he’s never done anything like that before. We all know that Kenny is a solid guy, that he is one of the most likeable guys in track and field. Plus, as Justin Gatlin pointed out on his podcast, Kenny was already ticked off at himself for letting himself get walked, and here this dude was gloating in his face, then veering into his lane. Get the heck out the way, fool. That’s the logic behind Kenny’s actions, and I feel that it at least somewhat justifies them. My thing is, Noah needs to realize that he too often brings out the worst in people, and that it’s not necessarily in the spirit of competition.
Genuine rivalries (as opposed to beefs) are what need to drive the popularity of the sport and of particular events. When you look at the men’s 400 hurdles with Warholm, Benjamin, and Dos Santos, you have three guys who respect each other but compete like hell against each other. They have pushed the level of the event into a whole new stratosphere. And people are watching; there’s a buzz around that event that hasn’t been there since the days of Edwin Moses. Meanwhile, in the women’s 400 hurdles, Sydney McLaughlin keeps switching to the open 400 in non-Olympic years (as she’s doing again this year), sapping much of the energy from the event that is there when she’s battling against Femke Bol, Anna Cockrell, and others. If Sydney were to battle Femke every year like the male hurdlers battle each other every year, their rivalry would be legendary.
So, to conclude, Noah Lyles is an all-time great, but I wish he’d chill with the staredowns.
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