Netflix made him a star – the 100m final made him an icon. But Noah Lyles isn’t done
Our athletics reporter Michael Gleeson wrote this feature on Noah Lyles before his gold-medal winning performance in the 100 metres in Paris. Ahead of Lyles’ bid for another gold medal, in the 200m, this is an insight into a superstar of the track.
Noah Lyles is the fastest man in the world. He has nail art.Credit: AP
Noah Lyles has nail art. On his fingernails, he has the word “ICON” painted in blue against a white background. He wears a cap that under its peak reads “Made It”.
Snoop Dogg wants the name of his manicurist in Paris.
When Lyles walked into a pre-Olympics press conference, he was disappointed there was no music to accompany his entry. He likes Queen’s bombastic We Will Rock You. So he made his own music.
“Duh duh duh duh da-duh! The champ is here!”
Lyles, the 27-year-old from Virginia, is the fastest man in the world, the biggest celebrity in athletics, and a man who views cultivating his own image as fundamental to cultivating his sport. He knows the sport entertainment industry is only minimally about the actual sport. It is about personality, celebrity and the story. He has happily offered himself up as the case for the prosecution.
Lyles wears a cap with the words “Made It” stitched under the brim. Credit: Getty Images
Lyles is a key figure in the popular Netflix doco Sprint, which has tried to do for athletics what Drive to Survive did for Formula 1. It is working, but Lyles is now discovering the cost attached.
In Paris, the reality of fame has taken him aback. Even in the athletes’ village, where he thought he would be comfortable among peers, he’s discovered that athletes can be starstruck selfie-lovers, too.
For someone who has spoken in the past of mental health struggles, he has found it confronting. Lyles represents the surprising paradox common among many elite athletes who, while projecting uber-confidence, also battle anxieties.
“I’ve got three therapists – that helps,” Lyles said of his next-level celebrity in Paris. “Apparently, the world does love Sprint and athletes do too, and I’ve become kind of popular in the village.
“I’m struggling with my mental [health] … but also, I’m very big on creating boundaries. I already have my set rules: I don’t take pictures while I eat, I don’t take pictures when I’m with my girlfriend, and I don’t take pictures when I work out. Other than that, everything is pretty fair game. I don’t have a problem with that.
Lyles is constantly in demand.Credit: Getty Images for USOPC
“I’m not even the most popular person in the village, so I know I’m not the only one who’s had to deal with situations like this.”
So he has taken to eating at irregular times and finding discreet nooks in the cafeteria where he can avoid attention, and spend time with his athlete girlfriend, Jamaican runner Junelle Bromfield.
Lyles has won six world championship gold medals, which puts him in Usain Bolt territory. But he is not there yet.
For all of Lyles’ dominance over the past three years, there is a big Olympic hole in his resumé. He has won six world golds but just one Olympic bronze, from the Tokyo Games.
Why? Partly because in Tokyo, the showman had no crowd. The empty stands of the COVID-19-affected Games left him hollow.
“I just remember being so, ‘This is not it. This is not fun. This is not cool. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I thought it was going to feel like’,” he recalled of the feeling before his bronze-winning 200-metre final in Tokyo.
“That’s literally the last few thoughts I had going through my mind as I got into the blocks. And it sucked.”
Lyles cried in disappointment at the press conference in Tokyo. He spoke of mental health problems and called his bronze medal “boring”. Recently, he admitted to still disliking the medal. For him, it’s a reminder of what he didn’t achieve, not what he did.
At the two world championships since Tokyo, Lyles has been unbeatable. As the reigning world 100m champion, he is regarded as the fastest man in the world, but he is not the fastest man in the world this year. That’s Kishane Thompson of Jamaica, who ran 9.77 seconds in June, sharper than Lyles’ 9.81 in a Diamond League meet last month.
Kevin Durant was unimpressed with Lyles’ comments.Credit: AP
So Lyles arrived in Paris determined not to be boring. Not to win a boring medal. And to bring the show. He offers a view of his prospects in Paris in the sort of unabashed third-person, hyperbole only the complex modern sportsman can offer: “To be honest, when Noah Lyles is being Noah Lyles, there’s nobody.”
What riles Lyles is the same thing that drives him. It’s that athletes and athletics should be bigger but are squeezed out by bloated, self-important US professional sports.
“You know the thing that hurts me the most?” he said after winning his three world championship golds in Budapest last year.
“I have to watch the NBA Finals, and they have world champion on their head. World champion of what? The United States? Don’t get me wrong. I love the US – at times. But that ain’t the world.”
Unsurprisingly, some NBA athletes didn’t take it well. Kevin Durant, for one, was offended which meant a number of other NBA fans were also offended. Of course, Lyles was right. But being right is not always enough.
Lyles recently signed an adidas contract through until the LA Olympics, which, according to his agents, is the biggest for a track athlete since Bolt.
Bolt understood better than anyone how to be the show. But Lyles doesn’t want to be the next Bolt: he wants to be the now Noah Lyles.
“It’s not about the win, it’s about how you win,” he said.