“It’s all about the execution,” is a post-race phrase much heard and repeated by athletes in the bowels of stadiums across the world.
Employing the same, meticulous approach to race day as training is an art form given the extra pressure of putting into practice a performance honed during long hours at an anonymous track without the watchful eyes of thousands of spectators.
New kid on the block Noah Lyles likened sprinting to a maths equation: one simple error and the moment is lost. “To run fast, you have to make sure you do the exact right thing every time,” the 22-year-old said after winning the 200m at Saturday’s Diamond League in Paris in a scintillating 19.65 seconds.
“It’s like a maths equation. You can’t get the maths equation by messing up one thing, it’s all over – it’s just like track, if you mess up in one part, the race is going to go to someone else.”
