The heavy downpour, the persistent headwind—nothing mattered. The gun was shot, and the Lausanne Diamond League showdown unfolded with the best of the sprinters under the relentless downpour. And Jamaican phenom Oblique Seville defeated the Olympic champion, Noah Lyles, to grab an impeccable win. Seville surged ahead of the field to cross the finish line in an impressive time of 9.87 seconds. And all of it in a -0.3 m/s headwind. But it wasn’t just nature that was playing spoiler that day. Another unexpected twist threatened to derail his plans.

Very few knew about the blunder that Seville had made on the day of the Lausanne Diamond League. Not even his coach, Glen Mills, was aware that Oblique Seville had pulled up to the Stade Olympique de la Pontaise without the one thing his race hinged on: his spikes. “It taught me a lot. Lausanne is what confirmed everything — that I cannot lose. But when I went out there, the rain was pouring heavy. And, I don’t think I want to share this, but I actually left my spikes at the hotel,” revealed Seville with a laugh in an Instagram Live with the Trinidadian track legend, Ato Boldon.

After clinching 100m gold at the World Athletics Championships, Seville sat down for a chat with Boldon, where he went over some of the most crucial moments in the season that helped him become the first Jamaican man to win the 100m world title in the last decade. “And I was there and saying to myself, ‘I wonder if this is a sign of me not to go out there and compete because I left my spikes,’“ continued Seville.

The mistake in rain-soaked Lausanne was a make-or-break moment. Would a simple slip of the mind thwart Seville? Fortunately for the Jamaican star, his therapist Jeffrey King came to the rescue: “So I call my therapist, Jeffrey King, and he contacted some people at the hotel, and actually get my spikes right before I go out there to perform.”

Months later, Seville can finally laugh about the blunder as he continued, “And I was there and I was a bit nervous. I’m not going to lie about that because it’s like it’s unprofessional for me. I left my tool, my spikes. So I was there striding out in my shoes while everyone was there striding out in their spikes. So I didn’t get any chance at all to run to do any striding out in my spikes.”

The rain was coming down heavy; Seville couldn’t warm up properly without his spikes—it was the 24-year-old’s mental grit that helped him win in a situation where a win looked impossible.  “When I stepped onto the track, the rain was just coming down hard. I told myself—okay, I can’t lose. I switched my mindset right there. I said, ‘I’ve already won this before the race even started,'” he said, reflecting on how he pulled off one of the best performances of the season.

Even Ato Boldon stated, “I have never seen anybody run that fast in that much rain.” But even after grabbing the win, Seville’s mind could not register it as reality.

How Oblique Seville conquered the rain to match his London performance at Lausanne

The weather in Lausanne was enough to leave the athletes doubting their potential. Just a month before the Lausanne Diamond League, Seville stunned the track world by clocking a 9.86 and defeating Noah Lyles in the London Diamond League. But London did not witness the show that rain gods decided to pull off at Lausanne. But Seville made sure to keep one thing the same—the mindset that he had when he lined up for the London DL.

“So when the gun went off and I pushed out, I just told myself to execute, same as I did in London, same rhythm, same drive, as if the weather was dry,” said Seville. And that was enough, because the next moment, when he “looked up”, he realized that he was already “in the lead!”

He added, “And I knew for a fact, one of the things that gave me confidence that day, I was going to run a personal best, no matter what. Whether I got a bad start or a good start, it didn’t matter because of the form I was in.”

With the mental strength, Seville managed to clock a 9.87, which was just 0.01 more than what he timed in London and beat Lyles once more. It turned out to be such an impeccable win that the athlete himself could not believe that he actually had done it.

Sharing how it felt for him, Seville told Boldon, “Honestly, I didn’t even realize what I’d just done, not until I got back to the hotel, watched the video, and heard everyone talking about the conditions. That’s when it hit me.” He added, “The rain, the track, the pressure — everything. But in that moment, I was just locked in. I knew what I was capable of, and nothing was going to stop me.” Oblique Seville indeed made sure to make the best out of the 2025 track season.