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[Cortney Ruic]

If there's one point brought home over the first episode of 'Sprint,' the new documentary by Netflix profiling the 100 meter Kings and Queens of track and field, it's that Noah Lyles is the main attraction.

The Virginia native comes locked and loaded with line after line in 'Heir To The Throne,' which is the first episode of six over the first season of the series, which follows professional 100 meter sprinters through the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Over six episodes we'll hear from Lyles, Sha'Carri Richardson, Zharnell Hughes, Marcell Jacobs, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson and Elaine Thompson-Herah, among others.

It's a special day for track and field, as we're fresh off the final days of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene and less than a month out from the Paris Olympics. So we're going to do what we do best and binge the entire season of Sprint, episode by episode.

Lyles proves to be a candid subject and a more-than-apt lead in the series, with his ability to rattle off stinging quotes, combined with his penchant for wearing big clothing and his overall main character attitude.

The first episode focuses on the pair in the lead-up to the Diamond League Paris meeting in 2023. We meet Lyles' mom, Keisha Caine Bishop, and his girlfiend, Junelle Bromfield, in Clermont, then later his coach, Lance Brauman, in Paris.

Fast forward to Rome. We're spending time with Jacobs and his wife, Nicole Daza, and his children. We're hearing about the injury that he's been managing, along with the criticism he's taken for skipping high-profile 100 meter events. Michael Johnson all but says his Olympic 100m title may have been a "fluke."

Multiple-time Olympian and track commentator Ato Boldon adds: "When he is healthy and is firing on all cylinders, he's the best in the world. That's why he's the Olympic champion. But he hasn't been close since."

Sprint's first episode is a quality introduction to the world of sprinting, into the minds and worlds of Lyles and Jacobs. Next up, Richardson, Shericka Jackson and the American vs. Jamaica subplots.

Like the series' first episode with Noah Lyles, we get an assortment of quotes to begin our introduction to Richardson, a Texas native, former LSU sprinter and graduate of Dallas Carter High School, and she does not disappoint.

Of course, while Richardson's 2023 season was nearly impeccable -- five wins in total across the 100 meter dash, including her World Championship win in Budapest -- her 2022 campaign was a bit of a mixed bag, as she bounced from the U.S. Championships.

We move back to Florida, and we meet Dennis Mitchell and the Star Athletics Club. We get into Mitchell's history with the U.S. team and his gold-medal in the 4x100 at the Olympic Games in Barcelona. We see him at home with his daughter and can understand the duality he plays, both as a coach and as a father wanting his daughter to succeed in this world.

Olympic gold medalists Usain Bolt and Allyson Felix chime in before we're in Kingston with Shericka Jackson, who we learn is the pride of Jamaican's track and field future. She does NOT want to answer questions about whether she's the future of the country's sprinting success.

Here, we probably get our most vulnerable moment of the episode as we touch back on the 2021 Olympics. Jackson ran her first round poorly, failing to advance through the 200m -- we see headlines criticizing Jackson's performance.

Jackson, 29, herself looks a bit nervous to be on camera -- maybe this just isn't her cup of tea. That dichotomy is all the more stark when you consider the first episode; the Americans thus far have been the driving forces of this documentary. They are brash and confident and offering the most pizazz.

The scene forwards a week later, and perhaps for the first time we see some sign of Lyles feeling discontent. Lyles tells us later in the episode that he can read his competition; it's all in the eyes. On the flip side, though, we can also see when there are cracks in Lyles' facade. Vulnerability is human, which is relatable. That's what's missing here, Lyles' processing what went wrong.

We finally meet Zharnel Hughes, a newly-crowned British record-holder who beat Linford Christie's 100m record of 9.87 in New York with a 9.83 clocking at the New York Grand Prix -- that time would stand tied for the fastest in the world over the 2023 season, along with Lyles and Christian Coleman.

Naturally, we now zoom in on a promotional shoot with Hughes and Christie, the 1992 Olympic champion, who comments that his competitors used to DO ANYTHING they could to set him off once he was down in the blocks. Flicking a small piece of rubbish into your lane. Who does that?

Not far away is Bishop, who's now at practice, and we begin to see the true connection Lyles has with his mother. She tells us that she once travelled all the way to Switzerland to see her son race for 19 seconds, only for a friend to tell her the real meaning of that trip: "Emotional support," she said.

We move to Hughes, who's playing a flight simulator game with his girlfriend, Shenel Francis. Boldon tells us Hughes is coached by Glenn Mills, who worked with the one and only Usain Bolt, and he adds that "their race models are very similar."

In an important moment of character-building, we learn that Hughes was forced to deal with hardships when the media in Great Britain challenged his allegiance, writing headlines which blasted that he was a "Fake Brit" because he was born in Anguilla, a British colony.

It didn't help that Hughes false-started out of the Olympic final in 2021, which only contributed to a domino effect, a series of false-starts at the British Athletic Champs, the Puerto Rico International Athletics Classic and the Birmingham Diamond League.

Ultimately, the brashness continues to enable Lyles in the moment. He surges past Hughes over the final meters to win in 19.47, which ended the year as the world's fastest time. Hughes breaks the British record, clocking a time of 19.73 -- also of note: Botswana's Letsile Tebogo, a fast-rising foil to Lyles who is not featured in the series, was second in 19.50.

The fourth episode of 'Sprint,' the track and field documentary by Netflix, darts off from Jamaica to the U.S., telling the stories of its various Jamaican and American stars, from Gabby Thomas and Sha'Carri Richardson to Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah.

We meet her again several minutes into the episode after introductions to Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah, multiple-time Olympic champions and sprint powers for Jamaica. We learn that both Fraser-Pryce, 37, and Thompson-Herah, 32, grew apart while competing for MVP Track and Field under Stephen and Paul Francis, with success having a way of ballooning the divide.

First it was first Shelly-Ann who decided to leave the group for the second time in 2020. A year later, Thompson-Herah did the same. Fraser-Pryce went to Reynaldo Walcott, while Thompson-Herah proceeded to work with her husband, Derron Herah.

Elaine hadn't come from much. She grew up in a small village in Jamaica and had dealt with criticism early in her life. But "I learned that never let nobody tell you you cannot," she said. Some fans didn't understand her move, but she added that "if you want to be great, you have to be selfish," and that "I'm not going to make a fool of myself. I can sprint on my own without MVP."

Of course, we get back to that storyline after a minor detour in Austin, Texas to meet Gabby Thomas, the 200 meter runner and multiple-time U.S. champion. After significant progression, Thomas began to emerge in 2021 as the country's top hope at the distance.

Of course, Thomas has talent, too -- plus, she has Jamaican roots along her father's lines. She won the U.S. Olympic Trials at the 200m distance in 2021 and later was third in the Olympic final. While she failed to reach the World Championships in 2022, her 2023 season saw her on the upswing.

We move again to Eugene and to Richardson, who is presented as a foil to Thomas in the 200m, but perhaps this is only for show because Thomas proceeds to run 21.51 in the U.S. final, which at that point was a new world lead.

One of the final scenes is of Thomspon-Herah walking off the track, vowing to be back. Though as we know, Thompson-Herah will not be at the Olympics after she withdrew from the Jamaican trials due to an achilles injury.

Advancing the story to the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, we find the stakes as high as they've ever been, and it's here where we swing our focuses to a host of medal contenders, including our main character Lyles and Richardson, along with Marcell Jacobs, Shericka Jackson and a new face in Fred Kerley.

The Texas native enters the show as the defending champion of the 100 meters at the World Championships, and among the first quotes we hear from him is "I'm from Texas. Football was my first choice."

The crux of this episode may begin by suggesting Lyles will challenge Kerley in a crucial World Championship race, but we never see that. Kerley comes up short in the semifinals in Budapest, and we instead see him exiting the track and walking alone in Budapest as international flags drape behind him.

Later, perhaps in an interview conducted many weeks after the championships, we hear from Kerley, who admits that he wasn't ready for the moment and suggests he will give up candy in 2024 to avenge his disappointment.

Kerley is a fascinating character whose authenticity which drives the early part of the episode. At one point, Lyles, Gabby Thomas and others are mulling around in a back room. Lyles points a question at Kerley.

And it's not just Kerley who exits the series. In a brief few minutes, Marcell Jacobs is out, too. The Italian comes up short in his semifinal. "The 100m is terrible if you are not 100 percent," he says.

His advancement through the semifinals only furthers a thought he had from earlier in the episode, when he questioned why the general public was so divided by his personal ambitions of 9.65 and 19.10 in the 100m and 200m.

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