Noah Lyles served notice on the 2026 season with a 9.95-second win in the men's 100m at the Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Tokyo on Sunday, his first outdoor race of the year and the fastest 100m he has run on Continental Tour soil. The American, who had clocked 10.05 into a headwind in the morning's heats, took advantage of a 0.6 metres per second tailwind in the final to pull clear over the closing 30 metres of a packed final. Britain's Tate Taylor was second in 10.04 and Jamaica's Jake Odey-Jordan rounded out the podium in 10.09, with the American Christian Coleman fourth in 10.12 on a return from injury.
Lyles said afterwards he was “happy with a clean opener” and confirmed that he would race the 200m at the Rabat Diamond League before turning to the US national championships. The 9.95 is his fastest season-opening 100m since 2023 and sits him third on the world list behind Gift Leotlela's 9.97 from Shanghai on Saturday and Kishane Thompson's 9.91 from the Jamaican domestic circuit. The Tokyo crowd, which had filled the National Stadium since the early afternoon to celebrate Haruka Kitaguchi's appearance, gave Lyles the loudest reception of the evening as he took the lap of honour with the Japanese flag in one hand and the American flag in the other.
Rai Benjamin took the men's 400m hurdles in 47.71, his first race over the barriers since the Paris Olympics and a controlled effort across the back straight that left him almost a second clear of Karsten Warholm's countryman Petter Olsen. Benjamin admitted he had “a few rusty patches” in the middle 200 but said the season opener had given him confidence ahead of his Diamond League programme. Yemi Mary John of Britain took the women's 400m in a meeting record of 49.62, an early statement of intent ahead of the European Championships in Birmingham in August, while Kenya's Purity Chepkirui won a deep women's 1500m in 3:58.91.
The men's 3000m produced the second meeting record of the night when Ethiopia's Berihu Aregawi clocked 7:30.04, ahead of Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who ran a strategic 7:30.91 in his only outdoor track race before the Bislett Games. Kenya's Reynold Cheruiyot was third in 7:31.18. Haruka Kitaguchi delivered the home moment of the night with a 67.41m javelin throw, more than four metres clear of the field and an unmistakable signal that the reigning world champion is on track for a bid at her first global outdoor title in Budapest.
Tokyo organisers reported the meeting was sold out for a third consecutive year, with an announced attendance of 33,400 for the early afternoon and evening sessions. The Continental Tour Gold meeting served as the unofficial Asian curtain-raiser to the European outdoor season, and athletes who passed through Tokyo will now move on to the Diamond League in Rabat next weekend and Oslo's Bislett Games in June. The next major appointment is the Xiamen Diamond League on 23 May, where Warholm, Alison dos Santos and Mondo Duplantis are all expected to start.