Noah Lyles obviously stars in Netflix’s latest docuseries about sprinting stars. He hopes it will boost the notoriety of his sport.
Relaxed and relaxed, a fan of a bling-bling look, but a fierce competitor, determined to one day erase Usain Bolt’s 100 and 200 m records, Lyles is the ideal character for this six-episode series called “Sprint “, broadcast from July 2, three weeks before the Paris Olympic Games (July 26-August 11).
But if the 26-year-old American plays the game so much in front of the cameras, it is because athletics, according to him, cruelly needs to be exposed and to inspire dreams outside of this legendary meeting where he dreams of achieving a historic quadruple (100, 200, 4 x 100 and 4 x 400 m).
“Everyone needs to see the situation we are in. Certainly, the 1% who are at the top, we are rockstars (…) But we are hopelessly lagging behind other sports” , launched the triple 2023 world champion (100 m, 200 m, 4 x 100) during a presentation in New York of the series, for which Netflix and World Athletics are partners.
“I hope everyone will say ‘we need to invest more to bring this world to a higher level, because we see these incredible athletes and what they achieve’,” adds the sprinter, as Friday opens the American Olympic trials in Eugene.
Russian mountains
“Sprint” uses the same recipes as its big sisters in F1 (“Drive to survive”), tennis (“Break Point”) or cycling (“At the heart of the peloton”): a handful of sprinters, including Lyles and his compatriots Sha’Carri Richardson and Fred Kerley, Marcell Jacobs and Elaine Thompson-Herah, reveal behind the scenes of the track to the stars, by allowing themselves to be filmed with family or in training, and by opening up in more personal interviews.
The series follows them during the season preceding the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. While Lyles puts on the show, Italian Marcell Jacobs opens up about his physical and mental difficulties after his surprising gold medal in Tokyo, which suddenly propelled him to another planet.
Each race is revisited with a big dose of dramatic intensity. “The sprint lasts 10 seconds, it’s so short. We really needed our narrative to be well put together,” explains one of the executive producers, Paul Martin, to AFP.
Nothing could be easier with Sha’Carri Richardson. In Budapest, the strong-willed athlete is filmed up close with her trainer Dennis Mitchell, whose career has been marred by doping cases. And the duo will experience a roller coaster of emotion, between a failed semi-final, which forces the sprinter to wait to find out if she qualifies on time, a few minutes to correct the situation before the final and an apotheosis on the last 100 meters.
An increasingly crazy border
“Sprint” arrives amid an abundance of projects for the Olympics. Netflix will also broadcast a series on American gymnast Simone Biles and another on men’s basketball. “As long as this type of program offers something new, there will always be an appetite,” assures Paul Martin, whose company Box to Box Films also produced series on F1, tennis and cycling.
The producer even bets that “the boundary between this type of show and live sport will become more and more blurred as technological progress progresses”. “Live sport will increasingly integrate these stories,” he assures.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
