US track and field superstar is on a mission to conquer the Paris Games

Lyles, the favorite to win gold in the men’s 100 meters and 200 meters, is not only the world’s most dominant track and field athlete but also its greatest showman. He learned years ago that simply being the fastest wasn’t enough to win over the casual sports fan. His personality needed to shine.

The 26-year-old paints his nails, uses the bowels of stadiums as fashion catwalks and wears flashier tracksuits and shoes than his competitors. And don’t forget Yu-Gi-Oh!

In an earlier heat in the trials, Lyles drew a rare Blue-Eyes White Dragon card, put it back on his tracksuit and moments later dominated the other runners.

“I don’t feel any pressure because I’m just having fun,” Lyles said. “All I have to do is be me. I constantly tell kids, ‘Be yourself.’ And if people see me as being corny, damn, I’m corny. But guess what? I’m winning by being corny.”

His longtime coach, Lance Brauman, said he has no objection to his student showing that side of himself, as long as he shows up to practice on time every day, goes to the weight room and listens to instructions.

“It’s a special quality about him. That’s what he does. He loves it and it motivates him,” Brauman said of Lyle’s personality. “I told him before we got here, ‘Hey, at the end of the day, you have to be you. And whatever it is, that’s what you need to do. He is who he is and he showed up when he was supposed to and that’s all I can ask for.”

But what fans see today is not what it always was. Lyles has spoken openly about being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and dyslexia as a child and facing verbal abuse from his high school classmates because of his appearance. The fun guy we see now spent much of his childhood lacking confidence and questioning his sense of worth.

And while that security was built over the years after he found himself on the track, the situation worsened ahead of the 2020 Olympics. The pandemic, coupled with the country’s racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, consumed Lyles, and he said he went into a deep depression.

“It just took away my voice and I didn’t want to be anywhere,” Lyles said in the Peacock documentary “Untitled.” “I just wanted to be in a corner. I was like, ‘I need help.'” (Peacock is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.)

He sought therapy and started taking antidepressant medication, and said he improved instantly.

“I remember the first day I took it. I felt like a huge rock had rolled off my chest,” he said. “I’m seeing the Noah I’ve wanted to see for months.”

Although he participated in the 2020 Tokyo Games in good spirits and excellent condition, his knee swelled 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 the bronze medal in what should have been from him event. It was only the second defeat in his professional career.

That result lit a fire in Lyles, he said, and set him on the dominant path he is on today.

“In Tokyo, I felt like I wasted a huge opportunity,” he told NBC News at the Olympic trials. “The more I look back, the more I think, ‘Wow, if that moment had never happened, I would never have produced what I’ve done so far.’ I don’t think there would be as much momentum in me as there has been in the last two years.”

Since third place, Lyles has been simply unstoppable.

At the 2022 World Championships, he broke Michael Johnson’s 26-year-old American record in the 200 meters with a time of 19.31. He then won gold at the 2023 World Championships (19.52) and broke the 2024 US Olympic Trials record (19.53).

Lyles also took first place in the 100 meters at the 2023 World Championships (9.83) and the Olympic Trials (9.83).

“Noah should be admired for what he did,” said Ato Boldon, four-time Olympic medal winner and NBC Sports commentator. “Everyone can say: ‘Ah, I want to improve, I’ll do anything to improve’. He actually went and did it.

Lyles’ team made some small adjustments that paid big dividends. For one thing, Brauman said, they hit the weight room harder than usual.

“If you look at him, you can tell he has a different body than he had in the past,” he said. “To be able to run that race and do laps, you’re going to have to do that.”

Lyles also points to fine-tuning his early career, an area of ​​concern early in this career. According to Boldon, “Noah was an inconsistent starter.”

If he does poorly in the 200 meters, he will have enough time to make up ground. That’s not the case in the shorter 100 meter race, especially against top competitors like Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.

“It wasn’t natural for Noah to be explosive out of the blocks, to be at his best in terms of getting away from the starting blocks in the first maybe 20 or 30 minutes. [meters],” said Boldon. “He always thought, ‘Well, I’ll get them back.’ At this level, you don’t catch people. So I think he realized, ‘OK, I don’t need to be the first to reach 20 or 30. I just need to be close enough. Nobody can stop me in the second half.’ And that’s why he’s a world champion.”

At the Olympic Trials, Lyles said he realized he was finally where he needed to be because “there wasn’t a lot of reflection. It was kind of just doing it. It was much closer to how I feel in the 200, which is what I’ve been hoping to feel for a long time.”