EUGENE, Ore. — Thousands of fans at the most storied venue in track-and-field history knew something magical was about to happen.
On a picture-perfect night with the sun starting to set, nearly all of the runners in the 100-meter final at the U.S. Olympic trials in June were lined up in their lanes. There was Kenny Bednarek, the 200-meter silver medalist in Tokyo. There was Christian Coleman, the 60-meter world record holder. And there were six other elite American sprinters joining them on the starting blocks.
The only person missing was Noah Lyles.
Boom boom clap. Boom boom clap. Boom boom clap. Boom boom clap.
Queen’s “We Will Rock You” started blaring from the Hayward Field speakers. Lyles, wearing a pearl necklace and a red tracksuit that was carried to the stadium in a silver briefcase by rapper Snoop Dogg, ran through the tunnel and past his stoic competitors.
He tore down the track about 25 meters, waving his hands up and down and jumping into the air. While his fellow runners stood there silent, trying to remain focused as this madman full of energy worked the crowd, Lyles screamed to those in attendance to match his energy.
And just 9.83 seconds later, it was all over.
Lyles blew through the finish line with a personal-best time to secure a spot in the 2024 Paris Games. It was the first step in a mission to claim four gold medals — one more than the legendary Jamaican star Usain Bolt ever did in a single Olympics.
“It was definitely electric. It was definitely responsive,” Lyles said of the environment after the race. “I think they all just need a little bit of a jolt.”
Lyles, the favorite to win gold in both the men’s 100-meter and 200-meter, is not only the most dominant track-and-field athlete in the world, but also its biggest showman. He learned years ago that simply being the fastest was not enough to break through to the casual sports fan. His personality needed to shine.
The 26-year-old paints his fingernails, uses the bowels of stadiums as fashion walkways and wears flashier tracksuits and shoes than his competitors. And don’t forget the Yu-Gi-Oh!, either.
In an earlier heat at the trials, Lyles whipped out a rare Blue-Eyes White Dragon card, put it back into his tracksuit and moments later dominated the other runners.
“I don’t feel the pressure because I’m just having fun,” Lyles said. “All I gotta do is be me. I constantly tell kids all the time, ‘Be yourself.’ And if people see me as being corny, shoot, I’m corny. But guess what? I’m winning while being corny.”
His longtime coach Lance Brauman said he has no objection to his pupil showing this side of himself as long as he’s arriving to practice on time every day, hitting the weight room and listening to instruction.
“It’s a special quality in him. That’s what he does. He loves it and that gets him going,” Brauman said of Lyle’s personality. “I told him before we got here, ‘Hey, at the end of the day, you gotta be you. And whatever that is, that’s what you have to do.’ He is who he is and he showed up when he’s supposed to and that’s all I can ask for.”
But what fans see today isn’t what’s always been. Lyles has spoken openly about being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and dyslexia as a kid and facing verbal abuse from his middle school classmates for his appearance. The fun-loving guy we see now spent much of his childhood lacking confidence and questioning his sense of worth.
And though that assuredness was built up over years after he found himself on the track, it took a turn for the worse ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games. The pandemic, coupled with the nation’s racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, consumed Lyles, and he said he went into a deep depression.
“It just took my voice away and I didn’t want to be anywhere,” Lyles said on the Peacock documentary “Untitled.” “I just wanted to be in a corner. I was just like, ‘I need help.’” (Peacock is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.)
He sought therapy and began using antidepression medication, and said he instantly improved.
“I remember the first day of taking it. I felt like a huge boulder was just rolled off my chest,” he said. “I’m seeing the Noah that I wanted to see for months.”
Though he entered the 2020 Tokyo Games in good spirits and top condition, his knee swelled up just before the 200-meter race. Lyles ran a strong time (19.74), but it wasn’t good enough that night. He finished behind Andre De Grasse and Bednarek for a bronze medal in what should have been his event. It was just the second defeat in his professional career.
That result lit a fire in Lyles, he said, and got him on the dominant path he’s on today.
“In Tokyo, I felt like I had blown a huge opportunity,” he told NBC News at the Olympic trials. “The more I look back at it, the more I’m like, ‘Wow, if I never had that moment happen, I never would have produced what I have done up until now.’ I don’t think there would be the drive in me as much as it has the last couple years.”
Since his third-place finish, Lyles has been simply unstoppable.
At the 2022 World Championships, he broke Michael Johnson’s 26-year American record in the 200-meter with a time of 19.31. He then claimed gold at the 2023 World Championships (19.52) and shattered the U.S. Olympic trials record in 2024 (19.53).
Lyles also took first place in the 100-meter at the 2023 World Championships (9.83) and Olympic trials (9.83).
“Noah has to be admired for what he did,” said Ato Boldon, a four-time Olympic medal winner and commentator for NBC Sports. “Everybody can talk about, ‘Oh, I want to get better, I’ll do anything to improve.’ He actually went and did it.”
Lyles’ team made a couple of small adjustments that paid major dividends. For one, Brauman said, they hit the weight room harder than usual.
“If you look at him, you can tell he’s a different looking body than he has had in the past,” he said. “To be able to run that race and run rounds, you’re going to have to.”
Lyles also points to fine-tuning his start off the blocks, an area of concern earlier in this career. According to Boldon, “Noah was an inconsistent starter.”
If he gets off poorly in the 200-meter, he has enough time to make up ground. That’s not the case in the shorter 100-meter race, particularly against top competition like Kishane Thompson of Jamaica.
“It didn’t come natural to Noah to be explosive out of the blocks, to be at his optimum in terms of pushing away from those starting blocks in the first maybe 20 or 30 [meters],” Boldon said. “He always felt like, ‘Well, I’ll catch them back.’ At this level, you don’t catch people. So I think he realized, ‘OK, I don’t have to be the first to 20 or 30. I just have to be close enough. Nobody can stop me in the second half.’ And that’s why he’s world champion.”
At the Olympic trials, Lyles said he could tell he was finally where he needs to be because “there wasn’t a lot of thinking. It was kind of just doing. It was a lot closer to how I feel in the 200, which is what I’ve been waiting to feel for a very long time.”
That confidence has Lyles peaking both physically and mentally ahead of the 2024 Paris Games. He’s spoken publicly about wanting to win gold at not one or two events, but four.
Bolt, who has eight total gold medals, won three in London in 2012 and three again in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 in the 100-meter, 200-meter and 4×100 relay. Lyles has his sights set on those events, plus the 4×400.
Though it appears unlikely he’ll have a chance to run in the latter race — his forte, of course, is sprints — Lyles’ lofty aspirations signify the type of person he is today. No more bad energy. No more doubting himself. He’s aiming to become more than a track star. He wants to be an Olympic legend.
Oh, and do it all in style.
“I’m doing it because I have fun. I do it because it’s enjoyable. I have joy when I’m here,” he said. “That’s the energy that I try to create and I try to keep going. I know when it gets tough and it gets hard and I think it’s too much, it’s like, ‘Hey, this isn’t supposed to be that serious. This is just running. I’m just here to run.’”
“All I gotta do is be me. And I’m pretty damn good at being me.”
