When Noah Lyles lined up for his first Olympic 200-meter final in Tokyo last year, he could hardly have been placed in a worse environment to succeed.
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His fitness, which had lacked earlier in the year as he balanced the 100 and 200 and weaned himself off antidepressants, was improving.
But he started the race in lane 3 (the result of a rookie mistake of letting up in the semifinals); Lyles, never the best turn runner, prefers to be on the outside.
Only Lyles, who has a habit of asking for a "Spirit Bomb" before races (a reference to the anime show Dragonball Z), relies on the support of spectators more than anybody else in the sport of track & field.
Because of Japan's COVID-19 regulations, his family was unable to attend. It wasn't the gold medal that Lyles and the track world had hoped for before the season, but it was a bronze medal nonetheless.
Lyles' 200m final at the 2022 World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field on Thursday night marked a turning point in his career.
He was in lane 6 this time.
There weren't a lot of people in the stands, but the tens of thousands of Americans there were enough to shake Lyles up before the race.
And his family was out in force in Eugene — brother, sister, mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, uncle, grandmother.
Michael Johnson had been the American 200m record holder for 26 years until Lyles recorded a personal best of 19.31 seconds