World Champion of what? Noah Lyles begs the question of truly global sporting success

The plan around here was to avoid all written and spoken word about the Rugby World Cup, at least until the week when the whole thing begins. It’s like those Halloween costumes hanging up in the shops; far too soon and too much already. –

Then, on opening Friday’s newspaper, out fell a neatly printed 32-page preview magazine, France 2023, with the front-cover headline: Shoulder to Shoulder – Ready to take on The World. No averting the eyes from a little sneak preview now, if only to find out what Gerry Thornley was hinting at.

“The betting, with six countries until recently 10-1 or under for the first time in World Cup history, demonstrates that this is the most open World Cup ever,” he writes, before concluding: “If so, then more than ever before, Ireland can win the World Cup.”

But if Ireland aren’t successful in winning, that’s not any failure, is it?

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We all know there are different measures of success or failure on the sporting stage. Especially when it comes to one as truly global as say (for argument’s sake) the World Athletics Championships.

For some, it will be the final medal table. For others, the top-eight placing table. For me, it’s whether the number of Irish athletics reporters left in the stadium outnumber the Irish athletes, even before the last day.

It was Seville, 1999, my first World Championships as a hungry reporter trying to make a name for himself. It’s not as if the Irish team of 20 athletes – 15 men, five women – travelled without any hope or expectation, although by the end of those nine long days and long nights, there was precious little left to write home about.

Believe it or not, Ireland had more finalists in the field than on the track, Ciaran McDonagh making the long jump final (finishing 10th) and Brendan Reilly making the high jump final (finishing in equal eighth), leaving Mark Carroll as our only finalist on the track (finishing 14th in the 5,000m).

The suffocatingly hot conditions did not help, the stadium a veritable concrete cauldron just across the Guadalquivir River; still, the postmortems from the then doyens of Irish athletics reporting were not pretty. Trust me.

So, fast-forward 24 years to what unfolded over those nine long days and longer nights again in Budapest, and what are being widely regarded as the most successful World Championships ever for Ireland, even without actually winning a medal.

Even before they started, with the highest number of athletes (just over 2,000), from 202 countries, Budapest was also being billed as the most competitive, and that certainly proved true. By the end, 46 different countries, almost a quarter of those entered, won at least one medal of some colour (equalling the previous best spread of Osaka, back in 2007).

That medal table was equally telling for some of the countries that were not there; once-upon-a-time superpowers Germany failed to win a single medal, and the French (who sent a team of 78 athletes, the largest since it staged the World Championships in 2003) only had their blushes saved in the penultimate event, when the men’s 4x400 metres relay tean snatched a surprise silver medal.

No wonder then that less than a year out from Paris hosting the 2024 Olympics, their minister for sport and the Olympic and Paralympic Games Amélie Oudéa-Castéra sought an explanation for France’s poor showing, adding that France was targeting up to six athletics medals at its home Games next year. That’s some ground to make up.

Back on the Budapest top-eight placing table, 71 countries featured, Ireland ranked 28th, thanks to fourth places by Ciara Mageean in the 1,500m, and then Rhasidat Adeleke in the 400m, plus the mixed 4x400m relay (sixth) and the women’s 4x400m (eighth).

In all, Ireland finished with 12 top-24 finishes, two above the expectations; add in Mageean’s national record, plus Sarah Lavin’s, and there’s no denying they made their presence felt and were well able to mix it on that properly global sporting stage.

It does mean the number of Irish World Championship medal winners can still be counted on one hand, the last being Rob Heffernan in 2013 and, while Adeleke clearly has time on her side, here’s one guarantee: things won’t be any less competitive come Tokyo 2025.

The danger here is when comparing success on this truly global stage to sporting success elsewhere. Just ask Noah Lyles, the American sprinter who in Budapest completed a first World Championship treble – 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay – since Usain Bolt back in 2015.

Afterwards Lyles aired one notable grievance, however, asking how on earth basketball players in the USA use the title of “world champion” after winning the NBA Finals.

“You know what hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have ‘world champion’ on their head. World champion of what? The United States?” said Lyles.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love the US, at times, but that ain’t the world. That is not the world. We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on their flag to show that they are represented. There ain’t no flags in the NBA.”

Cue all sorts of hot fuss and inevitable retaliation. Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant wrote on social media “Somebody help this brother”; the Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green and Portland Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard had similar feelings, while Aaron Gordon, who just won the NBA title with the Denver Nuggets in June, said he’d “smoke” Lyles in a 200m.

Speaking ahead of his victory in Thursday’s Weltklasse Diamond League in Zurich (Weltklasse meaning world-class, incidentally), Lyles suggested he was widely supported on his sentiments: “From the world side, I’ve gotten a lot of support,” Lyles said. “I’ve gotten a lot of football [NFL] players as well be like, ‘Hey man . . . I agree with you 100 per cent’. It’s funny because in the US, they’re against it, but when you look at the whole world, it’s like oh, wow, a lot of people agree with what I said.”

Which brought me back to the Rugby World Cup, and that apparently widely agreed observation that for all the competitiveness of the event, ultimately the winners will come from France, New Zealand, Ireland or South Africa, even if the lopsided draw means two of those cannot reach the semi-finals.

Which for any so-called global sporting event, may indeed beg a similar question when it comes to the end result: World Champion of what?