Gabby Thomas and Noah Lyles win 200-meter finals at U.S. Olympic Team Trials

Gabby Thomas beat Sha’Carri Richardson in the highly anticipated 200-meter final of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for track and field.

Thomas came in first with a time of 21.81 seconds. Richardson missed qualifying for the 200 meters by fractions of a second, but will still compete in the 100.

Brittany Brown, who set a personal best, and McKenzie Long will also run the 200 in Paris.

Long, whose mother died earlier this year, choked up after qualifiying for the race.

“Mom, your baby girl is going to Paris,” Long said after the race.

Thomas and Richardson, two of America’s best-known sprinters, both qualified for the Tokyo 2020 team, though Richardson will make her highly awaited debut this year after she was disqualified from the Tokyo team after failing a drug test.

No one was close to Richardson in her semifinals heat Friday. She equaled her personal best at 21.92 seconds.

Then Thomas, who ran in a different heat than Richardson, upped the ante with a blazing 21.78, the world’s best for 2024.

“I was really happy with that,” Thomas told NBC Sports moments after the heat. “That felt like a really smooth and easy run for me. I didn’t really know what to expect. So, to see that kind of time for something that felt so nice and controlled was a good feeling.”

Stream every moment and every medal of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Peacock, starting with the Opening Ceremony July 26 at 12 p.m. ET.

Saturday’s action at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, also included the men’s 200-meter final, from which world No. 1 Noah Lyles emerged victorious with a U.S. Olympic Trials record of 19.53 seconds. That time also makes Lyles the season’s world leader.

World No. 2 Kenny Bednarek and world No. 4 Erriyon Knighton are also set to race the 200 in Paris.

Bednarek ran a personal best with a time of 19.59 seconds, and Knighton got the best time he’s gotten this season at 19.77.

All three have been Olympians for this event. Lyles took bronze and Bednarek silver in that distance in Tokyo.

Lyles broke his own record Saturday after breaking it during Friday’s semifinal, with a 19.60-second time.

“It felt really easy,” said Lyles following the semifinal “I was very shocked to see that time pop up. I wasn’t even really trying.”

Lyles had already qualified for the 100-meter in Paris.

Earlier this week, Richardson was victorious in the 100, punching her ticket to Paris as she seeks the crown of “fastest woman in the world.”

Richardson, a Dallas native and LSU alum, tested positive for THC after qualifying for the Tokyo Games and missed out on competing.

She admitted to taking the drug to cope with the death of her mother, and her supporters lashed out at U.S. Anti-Doping Agency policies on cannabis in an era when the drug is increasingly being legalized across America.

Thomas, a Harvard alum, took bronze in the 200 in Tokyo. She and Richardson are ranked Nos. 2 and 6, respectively, in the world in that event.

Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson, who is competing in her national trials this weekend in Kingston, took the gold at the last Olympics.

Tokyo silver medalist Raven Saunders will be making a third trip to the Olympics after qualifying in shot put Saturday.

Other finals Saturday included the men’s and women’s 20K race walk, men’s discus, women’s long jump, women’s shot put and women’s 10,000.