The British underdog runners aiming to topple Noah Lyles and stun the 100m establishment
Zharnel Hughes will let his running do the talking when he faces old rival Noah Lyles at the World Athletics Championships this weekend while Jeremiah Azu is ready to stun the world in Tokyo, writes Luke Baker
Noah’s going to talk and I’m going to run.” Zharnel Hughes is contemplating the 100m at the upcoming World Athletics Championships – the sport’s blue-riband race at its biggest non-Olympic event.
The Noah in question is Noah Lyles. Braided hair, vibrant fashion sense, a confidence bordering on cockiness oozing out of every pore. He’s exactly what you imagine when picturing a 21st-century sprinting star.
Sure, he’s got a fast mouth, but his legs are even faster, as proven by the fact he’s the reigning world and Olympic champion over 100m and will be the man to beat when he begins his defence of the former in Tokyo this Saturday.
Lyles also has a personal history with Hughes, the fastest Briton of all time, who is friendly and engaging but far more understated than his American foe. In Netflix’s behind-the-scenes athletics documentary Sprint, broadcast last year, Lyles is seen telling Hughes: “If you don’t have main character energy, track and field isn’t for you.”
Hughes hadn’t realised what was said until the documentary was broadcast and admitted in an interview ahead of the Olympics that the comment “raised all the red in me.”
“I was like: ‘This guy, he just needs to shut up’,” he added at the time. “My girlfriend is the one who keeps me calm. She is like: ‘Babe, don’t get flared up, don’t let it get into your head. He’s saying these things so you guys can be thrown off psychologically.’ So, I use that burning desire, that red in me as an athlete, and I try to put it out on the track.”
There’s an argument that Lyles was proved right as he took 100m gold and 200m bronze at Paris 2024, while Hughes – slowed somewhat by a hamstring issue – couldn’t get past the semi-finals over the shorter distance and then withdrew from the slightly longer event, although he did help Team GB to a 4x100m relay bronze later in the Games.
Now, on the eve of an opportunity for a measure of redemption at the world championships, Hughes is initially eager to play down previous interactions with Lyles. “To be honest with you, I never had a rivalry with him,” he insists.
But the Anguillan-born 30-year-old can’t resist a little follow-up dig. “I just know he’s a competitor and Noah’s going to talk and I’m going to run,” laughs Hughes. “He’s known for that, that’s how he sells himself. But I just look forward to competing against him and the rest of the field that will be there in Tokyo.”
Speaking of the rest of the field, Lyles may be favourite to retain his 100m crown, but the great Usain Bolt, perhaps with a not insignificant amount of national partisanship, has predicted a Jamaican one-two from Kishane Thompson and Oblique Seville.
There’s logic behind Bolt’s proclamation, as Thompson, who won Olympic silver just 0.005sec behind Lyles, has set a world-leading time of 9.75sec in 2025, while Seville has beaten the American twice over the distance this year.
A 100m sprinter from the United States has won gold at each of the last four world championships, with Bolt the last non-American champion in 2015, but Hughes is also planning to be in the mix come Sunday’s final.
The dream would be bettering the bronze medal he earned at the 2023 worlds in Budapest – when he became the first British medallist in the men’s 100m since Darren Campbell 20 years earlier – and after sealing the 100m-200m double at the recent UK Athletics Championships, he’s aiming high.
When asked if he can break his own British record of 9.83sec in Tokyo, Hughes says: “Yeah, I think so. I’m in great shape as long as I execute the way we’ve been practising it’s possible. I’m looking for a British record in both [100m and 200m], to be honest with you.
“The competition this year has been great. As you can see, the likes of Kishane Thompson from Jamaica, the guys from America as well, they’re running pretty good. So, in order to be up there with them, you have to be running some crazy times as well.
“I can’t count myself out. I already know it for a fact that I’m a true competitor and I will show up when the time matters. So, I’m looking forward to being a part of the mix. I’m looking forward to running fast times to get me on that podium, by any means necessary.”
Hughes isn’t the only Brit hoping to upset the established sprint order in Tokyo, with Romell Glave and Jeremiah Azu also selected to run the 100m.
Towards the start of 2025, Welshman Azu declared that this would be “the best year of my life”, and it has more than lived up to that assertion so far. He dominated the indoor 60m season to an almost ludicrous degree, becoming Welsh champion, British champion, European champion and then, in March, world champion by sprinting to his first global title in China.
He also welcomed his son into the world to become a father for the first time and has shown form outdoors by matching his 100m PB of 9.97sec at the Stratford Speed GP last month.
So what would he need to achieve in Tokyo to continue the best year of his life? “I mean, imagine I go win it, that’d be great,” grins the supremely likeable Azu.
“I really hold myself to a high standard, so I just want to be competitive and leave with the best performance that I can. Definitely, the aim is to make the final, and once that is achieved, then you can start thinking about medals and other things. But if I’m able to do that, I think it’ll be something.”
The 24-year-old believes he is only at the start of his sprinting journey and has lofty long-term goals he is trying to reach.
“This is the start of the process I think can happen over the next four years leading to LA [the 2028 Olympics],” he explains. “I want to be the best in the world, so success would be trying to become that.
“I think it’s easy to get ahead of yourself and start talking about all these different things, but I like to let the running do the talking and we’ll just see what I’m able to produce.”
He also plans to tap into the experience of another British sprinter, Eugene Amo-Dadzie – known as “the world’s fastest accountant” due to his previous job – who clocked 9.87sec a couple of weeks ago to go joint second on the all-time British list and will be in Tokyo as part of GB’s 4x100m relay squad.
“We were getting food the other day, buffet-style queuing up, and I was behind Eugene,” says Azu. “I said, ‘Just tell me how it felt’ [to run 9.87s] because it must have felt crazy. That’s some real speed. It was cool to hear it from his perspective.
“I think someone like Eugene, I probably need to tap into him a bit more, as he’s a father and he’s got a couple of years on me. So in terms of experience, in his regular life, it’s definitely something I can reach out to him for.”
Both Azu and Hughes may be underdogs when they step onto the track this weekend, but the Brits will be doing their best to topple the sprinting establishment.
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