By Lori Ewing
PARIS (Reuters) – With Noah Lyles’ dramatic victory in the Olympic men’s 100 metres, Quincy Hall’s come from behind win in the 400m and Cole Hocker’s shock 1,500m gold among the highlights, the United States have dominated the athletics events at the Games.
The U.S. held a healthy lead in the track & field medal tally heading into Thursday’s finals with 19 — 13 more than second-best Australia — ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“Very important, you want a really well-stocked shop window,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe told reporters on Thursday.
Britain finished fourth in the medal table at the 2008 Beijing Games, which was a big boost ahead of the 2012 London Olympics when Coe was chair of the organising committee,.
“(Britain) won a sack full of medals, it sort of took you out of the arguments, and people just went ‘Oh my God bring this on’,” he said.
“And also, can you imagine all these British athletes and sportsmen and women in their own backyards, and I’m hoping that people in America are sensing that in track and field certainly this is the golden generation.
“It’s fantastic because in the past, you talked about Carl (Lewis), you talked about Michael (Johnson), but they were very much magnesium flares in that generation. Now you’re looking at a bandwidth of a performer.”
Coe attributed the U.S. success largely to the American college system, plus coaches, particularly in the middle distance races, pointing out that the men’s 1,500m in Paris had three Americans in the top five.
Paris also featured the debut of the “repechage”, which gives runners a second chance to advance to semi-finals if they do not clinch automatic qualifying berths. Briton Coe said whether or not that was a success in Paris would be a part of their post-mortem.
“These are cursory observations, but the broadcasters have quite liked it, the athletes themselves have liked it because they’ve had another chance obviously of qualifying,” said Coe, a twice Olympic 1,500 metres champion.
“The fans that I have spoken to have all said it’s pretty positive, they like the fact that you’ve got more stuff happening.”
One change Coe would like to see is the height of the 400m hurdles raised.
“It’s very much a personal view, I’ve spoken to a couple of 400 metre hurdlers and they think that actually, it’s probably something we might want to look at,” he said. “Because these guys don’t really look like they’re breaking their form very much to (clear the hurdles).”
(Reporting by Lori Ewing, editing by Ed Osmond)
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