Given Lyles’ personal best is 19.50 and he was running into a strong headwind, the time was immediately challenged. World champion Lyles, running on his own in Florida, had started from the wrong lane and run 15m less than his rivals at other tracks. Lyles, 22, tweeted afterwards: “You can’t be playing with my emotions like this….” The farcical ending to one of the event’s headline races will be a major embarrassment to Inspiration Games organisers, who banked on television and timing technology to make a major international athletics event possible despite the restrictions of coronavirus. Athletes competed from different venues around the world with starting guns firing simultaneously and athletes’ efforts shown alongside each other on television in a split-screen broadcast. Lyles, who won the 200m world title in Doha last year, reached the bend in Florida well ahead of opponents Christophe Lemaitre and Churandy Martina, competing in Switzerland and the Netherlands respectively. He powered across the line but his ‘winning’ time was revealed to have been aided by an error in the placement of his starting blocks, handing him a 15m headstart.