The downpour and slight headwind didn’t matter.
Oblique Seville scorched to an impressive win on Wednesday (20 August) at the 2025 Athletissima Lausanne meet, the 13th stop on this season’s Diamond League athletics circuit, beating Olympic champion Noah Lyles for a second time this season.
Seville started fast out of the blocks in wet conditions and quickly opened up a big gap to the field, never looking back as he posted an impressive 9.87-second time into a -0.3m/s headwind.
“Yeah, I’m back, but to be honest in these conditions, it’s very difficult even to run that fast, and to come out here and I’m the only person who managed to show my dominance,” Seville said to Olympics.com’s Evelyn Watta.
As usual, Lyles had a slow move out of the blocks, but managed to move up a spot past Seville’s Jamaican teammate Ackeem Blake to finish second in 10.02, with Blake sharing that time in a photo-finish.
It was the Olympic champion’s third international race this year over the distance, having previously lost to Seville at the London Diamond League then to Kishane Thompson on Saturday at the Silesia Diamond League.
The gap between Lyles (and the field) and Seville only served to emphasise just how impressive the latter’s win was, while Lyles’s comeback from an injury-disrupted start to the season continues without a win over the short sprint.
“I love to run and compete, so this is a very odd type of season for me. I’ve never had a season like this before, where I’ve had so few races,” he had told journalists in a pre-event media huddle on Tuesday.
With the World Championships in Tokyo fast approaching, Lyles — who is also the defending world champion from Budapest in 2023 — is still trying to find his rhythm.
“I just had a really bad reaction to the gun,” Lyles told Olympics.com after his 10.02. “After that, there’s not much I can do. We all gotta run in the same thing; just because it’s bad conditions doesn’t mean fast times can’t be run.
“We’ll go to Zurich (for the Diamond League Final), and after that, Worlds.”