Chainkeen Exchange-How Noah Lyles plans to become track's greatest showman at Paris Olympics and beyond

CLERMONT,Chainkeen Exchange Fla. – Sitting underneath the sun on a humid central Florida day, Keisha Caine Bishop reminisced when her once teenage sons, Josephus and Noah Lyles approached her with an inconceivable proposition.

“In 10th grade they wanted to go professional out of high school and I was like are you crazy,” Caine Bishop recounted to USA TODAY Sports.

Noah and his younger brother weren’t crazy. In July of 2016 when Noah was 19 years old, he and his younger brother, Josephus, 18 at the time, turned professional and signed a contract with Adidas instead of competing collegiately for the University of Florida.

“I had to go back and apologize,” Caine Bishop said. “I realized that’s not fair to kill somebody’s dream, especially if they are willing to do the work, and they were willing to do the work.”

Noah and Josephus have been running professionally since.

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Noah’s blossomed into the fastest man in the world. At the 2023 track and field world championships, Noah accomplished the coveted sprint double by winning the 100-meter dash with a time of 9.83 seconds and the 200 after crossing the finish line at 19.52. He was also a member of Team USA’s gold-medal winning 4x100-relay team. He was the first American to accomplish the world championship sprint double since Tyson Gay in 2007.

Noah doubled down on his fastest man in the world status when he equaled his personal-best 100 time of 9.83 and won gold at the 2024 U.S. Olympic track and field trials. A few days later, he broke the trials meet record and clocked a world-leading time 19.53 in the 200 to solidify his spot in both events at the Paris Olympics.

“Right now, he’s a world champion in the 100 and 200 meters,” Noah’s coach, Lance Brauman, told USA TODAY Sports. “We are trying for him to be the best sprinter he can be.”

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Journey to Paris

A pivotal juncture in Noah Lyles’ life came in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.

The COVID-19 pandemic coupled with racial injustices across America caused Lyles to fall into depression. He sought the help of therapists and was prescribed antidepressant medication. When the postponed Tokyo Olympics got underway in 2021, Lyles had just gotten off his antidepressants.

A gold-medal favorite in the 200 meters, Lyles took home a bronze medal in his signature event. Overall, the Tokyo Olympics was a disappointing for the U.S. men’s track and field team, which saw the men’s squad earn only two gold medals.

“It was a challenge because I was coming off my antidepressant medication. It was tough to find the balance of getting excited and staying calm throughout the year,” Lyles said to USA TODAY Sports.

Lyles has since been open about his bout with depression.

“It’s present but it’s not uncontrollable. It’s not to the point where I need medication to aid me and helping (me) to find the right mental stability. I still have two therapists who I talk to very constantly,” Lyles said. “Now, not only do I believe I’ve figured out how to get through hard times like that and reaching out for help and keeping people I need close to me, I’ve also figured out how to evolve.”

Lyles’ mother, who also has clinical depression, is proud of her son for using his platform to speak about his depression because of the positive impact it will have, especially in the Black community where there remains a stigma attached to mental health. According to WebMD, for Black people who have depression, it typically tends to be more severe, persistent and more difficult to treat. Yet, just one out of three Black adults with mental illness get treatment for it.

“It makes me so angry in the Black community,” Caine Bishop said. “That’s still the mindset. We have to get rid of the stigma. … So yes, it makes me extremely proud. I don’t want anybody to struggle the way I struggled.”

'Ignited a fire'

Lyles has six world championship gold medals. He’s won three consecutive world championship titles in the 200. But his resume is void of an Olympic gold medal. The trials and tribulations in the buildup to the Tokyo Olympics have motivated him.

Lyles broke the American record in the 200, running a personal-best time of 19.31 the next year in 2022, and four of his six world championship gold medals have come after the Tokyo Olympics.

“After getting the (Olympic) bronze, I feel like that ignited a fire that I’m still running on to this day,” Lyles said. “Since then, I’ve been grabbing golds left and right (and) broke (the) American (200) record.”

The fire is still raging rapidly for Lyles, and he has no plans to extinguish it for the foreseeable future.

Earlier this year on the heels of the 2023 world championships, Noah inked an extension with Adidas that in overall value made the deal the richest contract in the sport of track and field since Usain Bolt.

The Bolt distinction is relevant. Bolt is track and field’s most recent mega star. Lyles aspires to reach a similar status.

Like Bolt, Lyles is a showman on and off the track. He most recently made an Olympic trials entrance with hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg and revealed Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards under his uniform prior to winning two gold medals to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

The attention Lyles is creating is strategic. It helps increase track and field's popularity − ratings for the 2024 track and field trials was up 38% from the previous trials in 2021 − and simultaneously puts more eyeballs on the fastest man in the world.

“Oh yeah, that was the goal the whole time. It was very calculated. It didn’t happen by accident. …We’ve planned this for years. We’ve made sure not only people know my name in this sport but outside of it,” Lyles said. “Some things are a little more random, like how much attention some comments get, but also using that to my advantage. Knowing that people have more eyes on me, means that I can direct them in the direction that I want them to go and that’s the important part that I see.

"As much as I am a track and field athlete, I’m just as much a marketer. And I see myself as a big brand. For the brand to be successful, I have to keep gaining and opening up to new territory. Anything I do, I want to do to the best of my ability. ...There have been tons of people who have run fast. But how many can you say were very marketable? Even if you look at some of the champions who you’ve had of late, they’ve held the title, but what have they done with it? I take my job of holding the title of world’s fastest man right now very serious.”

Chasing Usain Bolt

It’s ironic that Lyles’ favorite French word is “bibliothèque,” which is library in English. Lyles doesn’t speak French nor is he an avid library goer, but he likes the pronunciation of the word.

Bolt rewrote the track and field record books before he retired in 2017. Bolt’s times of 9.58 in the 100 and 19.19 in the 200 are world records. The Jamaican superstar, whose last Olympics was in 2016, owns eight Olympic gold medals.

Lyles wants what Bolt has: Olympic gold medals and world records.

“It’s very motivating. You can’t claim to be the greatest without having an Olympic gold medal to go with it," he said.

Lyles' personal-best times are 9.81 in the 100 and the American record he set in the 200 (19.31). Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs ran a 9.80 in the 100 to win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. In the 200, Canada’s Andre De Grasse sped through the finish line in 19.62 to top the Olympic podium.

If Lyles runs new personal bests in each event, he’ll likely be the first male sprinter to achieve the Olympic sprint double since Bolt did it at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics (Bolt also won gold as a member of Jamaica’s 4x100 relay team in Rio). 

“The best of the best have some things in common. They are internally driven,” Brauman said. “They want to be the best that they can be. They want to be great because it fulfills them more so than anything from the outside.”

Brauman and Lyles have emphasized strength training in preparation for the Paris Olympics. The extra strength will enable Lyles to apply more force into the track, which will help him improve his start and acceleration. 

“His No. 1 strength is his top end speed. He’s very technically good at top speed, which enables him to maintain it. Not only top end speed but speed maintenance,” Brauman said. “I’d say that first 30 is where we are putting a lot of emphasis in. That’s where he has the biggest gap to continue to improve.

“We’re gonna do the things we think we need to do to have him ready to run as fast as he’s capable of running.”

Lyles hopes his increased strength will help him be crowned an Olympic champion for the first time, and maybe even have a chance at Bolt’s world records. He wants to be a track and field legend, like Bolt. Lyles, who turns 27 on July 18, doesn’t plan on Paris being his final Olympics, either. He yearns to compete at 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and perhaps the 2032 Olympics.

He's motivated to go down as one of the greats and have his name etched in books inside the bibliothèque. 

“I want to be the best at track and field,” Lyles said. “I also want to be the most recognized athlete in track and field.”

Follow USA TODAY Sports' Tyler Dragon on X @TheTylerDragon.

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