Usain Bolt predicts men’s 100m champion at Tokyo 2025
The three-time 100m world champion does not think Noah Lyles will retain his gold medal
Photo: Nick Webb/ Flickr
This Sunday in Tokyo, the title of world’s fastest man is up for grabs, and the world record holder, Usain Bolt, has a bold prediction about who it will be.
Bolt met with the media at Puma’s Future of Fast event in Tokyo on Thursday, where he fielded questions ranging from how fast he could run with today’s shoe technology to who he thinks will win the men’s 100m world championship title.
“There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be 1-2 [in the men’s 100m in Tokyo].”
Talking at a @PUMA event before the World Athletics Championships, @usainbolt believes Kishane Thompson and Oblique Seville can take home gold and silver for Jamaica 🇯🇲
Their respective season’s bests… pic.twitter.com/HKSjbiolPJ
— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) September 11, 2025
Although Noah Lyles arrives in Tokyo as the reigning world and Olympic champion, Bolt does not think the American will retain his gold. Instead, Bolt predicted a Jamaican 1–2 finish, with compatriots Kishane Thompson and Oblique Seville atop the podium.
“There’s no reason they shouldn’t be 1–2. They have the fastest times in the world this year, and they’ve been doing well,” said Bolt on the two Jamaican sprinters. “It’s all about whether they can execute and ignore the noise, and I am very confident they can get it done.”
Thompson, the Olympic silver medallist in the 100m, holds the fastest time in the world this year with his 9.75-second run at the Jamaican Track and Field Championships in June. The 24-year-old enters Tokyo as world No. 1 in the men’s 100m and will be looking to get redemption against Lyles, who beat him by one-hundredth of a second last summer in Paris.
Bolt has also long viewed Seville as the next great Jamaican sprinter, noting that he is coached by Glen Mills, the same man who guided Bolt for more than a decade.
The last time a Jamaican sprinter reached the men’s 100m podium at a world championship was when Bolt himself won bronze in London 2017. If you ask any Jamaican track and field fan, they’ll say a medal is long overdue.
Outside of the Jamaican duo, Americans Kenny Bednarek and Lyles will look to prove the three-time Olympic 100m champion wrong. Lyles has beaten Thompson in two of their last three meetings, with Thompson’s only win coming at the Silesia Diamond League in Poland.
Seville holds three wins in his five matchups with Lyles, but he has fallen just short at the last two world championships — finishing fourth in both Budapest 2023 and Eugene 2022.
For Canadian viewers, the men’s 100m semifinals and final will take place Sunday at 7:40 a.m. ET, where Bolt will be on hand to crown the next world’s fastest man—a title he once held for so long.
