US star Lyles bids to banish COVID woes as athletics returns
MONACO: American sprint star Noah Lyles will bid to put his aggravated psychological problems to one side as he heads a stellar line-up of athletes when competitive track and field resumes in Monaco on Friday in a season almost wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic.
Following exhibition events in Oslo and Zurich in June and July, the Diamond League meeting in Monaco will mark the start of the competitive season. Meetings in Eugene, London, Paris, Rabat, Gateshead and Shanghai have all cancelled because of coronavirus.
Six more Diamond League meets are currently scheduled, in Stockholm, Lausanne, Brussels, Rome, Doha and a yet-to-be-decided venue in China, running from Aug. 23 until Oct. 17.
Lyles, who won the world 200 metres and the 4x100m relay in Doha last year, has admited to psychological problems worsened by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Black Lives Mater movement and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics at which he was hotly tipped for success.
“It’s a kind of perfect storm,” Lyles said of those triple concerns.
Lyles scorched to a meet record of 19.65sec in the 200m the last time he raced in Monaco, in 2018. And the 23-year-old warned that he was targeting another fast race.
“I told my coach ater the virtual Zurich Diamond League that I really wanted to run a fast time in Monaco,” said Lyles, who will be racing his brother Josephus -- making just his third Diamond League appearance -- and 2017 world champion Ramil Guliyev of Turkey.
“I know it’s going to be a really good track, I know it’s probably going to be wind legal. I want to do everything in my power to make sure that this race is really fast.”
While admiting to being on anti-depressants, Lyles said his experience during lockdown had not been all negative.
“We probably stayed in our house for about three weeks. There wasn’t a lot of time where I wasn’t training or going out,” he said.
“We lost our track for about six weeks, so we trained in a park. Even though we weren’t travelling and racing, we were still practising.
“When our gym reopened, we still didn’t want to go and expose ourselves to more people than we need to. As of my shape, it’s prety good. I’m just going to say that, I’m in really good shape.”