Announcements of this kind do not happen every day. On August 16th, at the Diamond League in Silesia, Noah Lyles will face Kishane Thompson in the 100 metres! This will be the Polish debut of the sprinting great and a rematch the Jamaican has been waiting for since the Paris Olympics. The show is not to be missed. Tickets are available for purchase.
If anyone had any doubts as to whether the 2025 Diamond League meeting in Poland will be a true global athletics feast, the final answer has now been given. On August 16th, at the Silesia Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in the Superauto.pl Silesian Stadium, the great Noah Lyles will appear!
– This is one of the names to which we at the organising comittee referred to as a dream. Now it is coming true – said the excited Piotr Małachowski, sports director of Poland’s top athletics meeting.
The Silesia Kamila Skolimowska Memorial has hosted an abundance of stars already. In 2025 yet again an exceptional gathering of Olympic medalists, world champions and record holders is in store. Armand Duplantis, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Julien Alfred – the names on the list excite all athletics fans.
– But Lyles is special. He is the epitome of athletics marketing – Marek Plawgo stated – It is no accident that one-half of the Netlix „Sprint” series is about him, directly or indirectly. Since Usain Bolt’s departure from the track, he has taken over as the king. Both of speed and of the show.
Plawgo, who has seen the 28-year old live in action several times, stated with full conviction: when he enters the stadium, no one looks elsewhere. Everything else disappears, Noah has the full attention of everyone.
– What can I do? I was born to be a champion. I like it. I like the fame. I like it when people look. Let them look, especially my rivals – at my back as I pass them. And what do they say about me? I do not care. All that interests me is to be first – that is what he said about himself.
– Always loud and all over the place. He is just Noah. I am not like that, I prefer quiet and silence. He does not – Letsile Tebogo, winner of the last Olympic 200 metres final, said of Lyles.
The Botswanian stepped on Lyles’s turf in Paris. Due to a coronavirus infection, which affected the American’s form at the key moment, he beat Lyles at this distance. That clearly hurt Lyles, who took revenge for the loss at the recent Monaco meeting. But when he lost in Paris, he was already a fulfilled man. Several days earlier he became champion at the royal 100 metres distance. Having already won a world title in that event, in the Stade de France he wanted to get rid of the label of being a bend-running specialist. He did it – on the largest possible stage, after a dramatic battle.
– All eight finalists finished within 12 hudredths of a second. All broke 10 seconds, which had never happened before. But that is not all. Lyles finished just five thousandths of a second ahead of Kishane Thompson. What made the champion happy must have been painful for the Jamaican – statistician Tomasz Spodenkiewicz recalled.
On August 16th, at the Polish leg of the Diamond League, Lyles’s main opponent will be none other than Thompson.
– It could not have been done better, what helped us was a bit of luck and the timing of our meeting. But this will be the first race between the two men since the Paris final. A great rematch after what happened in France. They both know it well. So does everyone who will be watching the competition on the day – Małachowski said excitedly.
Four years younger than his main opponent, Thompson entered the world sprinting elite with a bang. In 2023 he went from an uknown to improving his personal best by nearly 0.4 of a second – to 9.85 – but did not make it to the World Championships in Budapest. He lost out on a place at the national trials. He did not miss his chance a year later and he confirmed his place in the elite in Paris. This year he is well on his way to the top. In June at the prestigious Jamaican championships he left his rivals behind to take the title with a fantastic 9.75. The time puts him sixth on the all-time list.
The sprinting showdown coming up on August 16th in Silesia will be watched by the entire world. But such events are even better when seen in person. Tickets to the Diamond League meeting in Poland are still available on the MemorialKamili.pl website.
Besides the men’s sprint, a great race is to be expected in the women’s 100m, with Ewa Swoboda facing, among others, Alfred, the queen of the distance in Paris. The World Indoor runner-up from Glasgow will be one of 30 Polish athletes appearing in the Superauto.pl Silesian Stadium. That group will include Natalia Bukowiecka, Pia Skrzyszowska, Paweł Fajdek, Wojciech Nowicki, Jakub Szymański, Weronika Lizakowska, Anna Wielgosz and other leaders of the national team.
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