World Indoor Championships: The rivalry and 3 reasons Noah Lyles lost the 60m title to Christian Coleman

Before the commencement of the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, the men's 60m was one of the most anticipated events as it was to feature two of the greatest sprinters in history: Noah Lyles and Christian Coleman.

Both speedsters have had their soft rivalry in the 100m for a few years, but this season it got intense as Lyles decided to step down in his least favourite event, the 60m - Coleman's best.

After a series of impressive indoor runs, Lyles will prove his massive improvement at the US Indoor Championships, where he edged Coleman to the 60m title in a brilliant Personal Best (PB) and a then world-leading time of 6.43s.

It was Lyles's first-ever victory over Coleman and the latter's first defeat in the event since losing to Olympic Champion Marcell Jacobs at the 2022 World Indoor Championships in Belgrade.

The US title set the tone for the established rivalry and what to expect in Glasgow. "Of course, you don't like to lose at all, but it's always respect and it's love. We just keep working. We'll be there at Worlds," said Coleman in a post-race interview.

Coleman did back up his words with revenge, blazing to a new world-leading time of 6.41s to regain his world title from 2018, while Lyles settled for the silver medal in 6.44s, ahead of Jamaica's Ackeem Blake in 6.46s.

With Coleman's show of dominance, it became inevitable that he was not losing that world title, and here are 3 reasons why Lyles never stood a chance.

Christian Coleman is regarded as the best 60m runner in history, having clocked the World Record (WR) of 6.34s and recorded three of the top five fastest times in history.

He ran the WR the same year he won the 2018 world title. But after losing his thrown to Olympic champion Jacobs in 2022, he wasn't succumbing to back-to-back world final defeats.

The US championships was just his second race of the year, so heading to Glasgow, he had fine-tuned his techniques and was in shape to regain his world title, where there'll be no room for a Lyles bragging right.

As the WR holder in the event and a chance to become a double world indoor champion, the experienced 27-year-old came to Glasgow with only one goal in mind - to win.

He allowed Lyles to get the better of him at the US indoor championships and wasn't going to allow that again, considering this was a world stage.

A defeat would have meant three straight losses in a major 60m final and questioned his supremacy in the event plus confidence heading outdoors in an Olympic year.

To avoid that, Coleman was on a mission to execute a near-perfect race that would have given no sprinter in history a chance, not even a fast-finishing Lyles.

In twenty years of Coleman's running career, his parents had never watched him race live at the stadium., but they were present for the first time to spur him to victory in Glasgow.

Knowing his parents were in his corner cheering him on was surely a confidence booster, and Coleman knew he had to finish the job by giving them the gold medal that has eluded him since winning the 2019 world 100m title.