SAINT-DENIS, France — Noah Lyles won the Olympic 100 meters by .005 seconds Sunday, waiting some 30 seconds after the finish of an excruciatingly close sprint to find out he’d beaten Kishane Thompson of Jamaica.

The word “Photo” popped up on the scoreboard next to the names of Lyles, Thompson and five others after they crossed the line.

Lyles paced the track with his hands draped over his head. Finally, the numbers came up. Lyles won in 9.784 seconds to edge out the Jamaican by five-thousandths of a second.

Lyles said he thought he had given the win away by dipping at the line too soon, so he went up to Thompson and told him, “Bro, I think you got that one.”

“But then my name popped up and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, amazing!’”

“I thought I had (him) cleared,” Thompson said. “But I wasn’t sure. It was so close.”

Fred Kerley of the U.S. came in third at 9.81.

“That’s probably one of the most beautiful races I’ve been in,” he said.

The top seven all finished within .09 of each other.

This was the closest 1-2 finish since at least Moscow in 1980 – or maybe even ever. Back then, Britain’s Allan Wells narrowly beat Silvio Leonard in an era when timing didn’t go down into the thousandths of a second.

Lyles became the first American to win the marquee event in Olympic track since Justin Gatlin in 2004.

The winning time of 9.784 marks a personal best for Lyles, who has been promising to add his own brand of excitement to track and field, and certainly delivered this time.

He will be a favorite later this week in the 200 – his better race – and will try to dislodge Usain Bolt as the most recent sprinter to win both Olympic sprints.

For perspective, the blink of an eye takes, on average, .1 second, which was 20 times longer than the gap between first and second in this one.

What was the difference? Maybe Lyles’ closing speed and that lean into the line that he thought was mistimed.

He and Thompson had two of the three slowest bursts from the blocks, and Thompson had what sufficed for a “lead” at the halfway point. The photo finish actually shows Kerley’s orange shoe well in front of everything at the finish line. But it’s the chest breaking the barrier that counts, and Lyles beat everyone by a sliver.

When he learned he had added the Olympic title to the 100 meters he won at the world championships last year, Lyles pulled off his name tag and raised it to the sky, then brought his hands to his side and pointed at the camera.

“America, I told you I got this!” he yelled into the camera.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh won gold in the women’s high jump for her war-torn country of Ukraine and, as a bonus, had company. Her teammate, Iryna Gerashchenko, won the bronze, and the teammates hopped, skipped and jumped around the track, parading their blue-and-yellow flags in a heartfelt celebration.

Mahuchikh needed fewer tries to clear the winning height of 2 meters than Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers, and so added Olympic gold to her world championship and world record.

The best rivalry in track will culminate Tuesday in the men’s 1,500, when reigning world champion Josh Kerr of Britain takes on defending Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway.

They squared off in the semifinals, and Ingebrigtsen edged out the Brit, looking over to him twice as they surged down the homestretch. Ingebrigtsen’s time was 3:32.38.

“They should be expecting one of the most vicious and hardest 1,500s the sport’s seen in a very long time,” Kerr said.

Did Ingebrigtsen agree?

“Depends who you ask, maybe,” he said. “I mean, racing is what you want it to be.”