How do you fill the size-13 shoes of one of the greatest, most charismatic athletes of all time? This is the question that has loomed over every major track-and-field tournament since the record-obliterating Jamaican Usain Bolt hung up his spikes in 2017. Despite the emergence of a talented, competitive generation of speed-merchants in recent years — especially in the women’s 100 metres — there is a feeling in the sport that sprinting is running out of steam.
But more intimate fly-on-the-wall scenes that follow the athletes at home, in training and on tour illuminate the individual characters and their interactions with rivals. You realise how much of the race is run before the gun goes off. Lyles in particular appears to relish the mind games; his ostensibly innocuous comments, glances and gestures seem geared towards unnerving the competition.