•Hughes broke a 30-year British 200m record at last year’s sellout London Diamond League before going on to become the first British man to make the 100m podium at a World Championships for 20 years with bronze in Budapest.
•Along with Lyles, Hughes’ breakthrough 2023 was documented in Sprint, athletics’ version of F1’s Drive to Survive, released earlier this month.
Image: /BBC
“If you don’t have main-character energy, track and field ain’t for you.”
So says American 100m and 200m world champion Noah Lyles in the trailer for Sprint, Netflix’s new behind-the-scenes athletics series.
Zharnel Hughes would prefer to let his performances do the talking in Paris.
Hughes broke a 30-year British 200m record at last year’s sellout London Diamond League before going on to become the first British man to make the 100m podium at a World Championships for 20 years with bronze in Budapest.
The 29-year-old is hoping to use London - and the buzz of a home crowd - once again as a springboard to global success when he lines up for a tantalising 100m race on Saturday, six days before the Paris 2024 opening ceremony.
He will be joined on the start line by Lyles, winner of three golds last summer, and Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo, who took world silver ahead of Hughes.
“I’m looking forward to London, I feel it’s going to be special,” says Hughes, a qualified pilot who is often practising on his flight simulator when not at the track.
“Last year was extraordinary. The fact it’s the last Diamond League before the Olympic Games, it’s going to be stacked and I want to lay something down there.”
Along with Lyles, Hughes’ breakthrough 2023 was documented in Sprint, athletics’ version of F1’s Drive to Survive, released earlier this month.
Lyles, who backed up his bold statements last year and could target four Olympic golds by adding the 4x400m relay to his schedule in Paris, is unsurprisingly a star of the show.
It has proven an enlightening watch not only for fans, but also for the athletes themselves.
“When I saw the preview, that’s when I realised [Lyles] said a lot,” says Hughes, who was described by his rival as “another person to beat” before London last year.
“I thought ‘this guy can talk’. I knew he talked - but I didn’t know he talked that much.
“Being a competitor, it raised all the red in me. I was like: ‘This guy man, he just needs to shut up.’ For me, I will try to use that on the track.
“It’s just the perfect timing leading up to the Olympic Games. I will see him in London and we’ll meet there - but I’ll talk with the spikes.”
The pair will also have British 100m champion Louie Hinchliffe and compatriot Jeremiah Azu, Jamaicans Yohan Blake and Ackeem Blake, and South African Akani Simbine for company in a fascinating pre-Games showdown.
However, Hughes will be one of only two athletes on the start line yet to run under 10 seconds this year - which has been disrupted by injury, as he sustained a grade one hamstring tear at the start of June.
This season started promisingly when he clocked 19.96 seconds to secure a 200m victory over former world 100m champion Fred Kerley in Jamaica in May.
But he was seen limping away from the track following a 10.09sec performance in Kingston, where he is based and trains under Glen Mills, the former coach of eight-time Olympic champion Usain Bolt and two-time 100m runner-up Yohan Blake.
Denied the chance to compete at the European Championships and defend his British titles, Hughes says he not only recovered quickly from the setback but returned an improved athlete after a meticulous effort to strengthen his entire body.
“By the end of my first week back in training, we were already sprinting and my coach noticed something had changed. My technique looked better, I looked stronger,” Hughes says.
“Coach said: ‘I don’t think the injury did too much - it actually seems like you got better.’”
Hughes, who also took down Linford Christie’s 30-year British 100m mark in 9.83secs last year, is counting down the days until he gets the opportunity for the redemption he has wanted since that fateful night in Tokyo three years ago.
When Hughes suffered calf cramp as he set himself in his starting block moments before the last Olympic 100m final, he knew instantly that it was over.
Accepting the red card shown to him for his false start with a nod of resignation, his disqualification official, the Anguilla-born Briton was escorted away from the track, his dreams in tatters.
In Paris, Hughes hopes to put the record straight.
“I would love to rewrite the history books after what happened in Tokyo,” says Hughes, who would watch Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs claim a shock gold.
“I believe that [I would have won that final]. I felt it. I felt I was ready. Obviously, when that happened, everything stopped.
“Recently I read a saying: ‘You might have been delayed, but you’re not denied.’ I believe that.
“When it’s my time, it will be my time.”