“A LOT OF CHANGE has been happening, but yeah, it’s been good.” So said Noah Lyles when he sat for this talk before the indoor season —a short 2-meet campaign, as was the plan. Lyles, now 27, wrapped it with a 60-meter win at the New Balance GP, noting, “There’s a lot more track to be run later in the season.”
The showman sprinter’s two most recent seasons brought an ascension to World No. 1 status in the 100 and gold medals at the ’23 Worlds in Budapest and Paris Olympics (9.79 PR). In Budapest Lyles scored his first global dash double when he added his third WC 200 gold (after ’19 and ’22 wins) and earned a second 4×1 gold with Team USA (his first came in ’19).
Good change, for sure, and forward motion in his illustrious career.
Lyles’ half-lap and relay hopes for Paris were dumped on by an ill-timed case of Covid, though, with the viral illness already setting in, he managed to capture 200 bronze. Read on. Lyles detects a silver lining. (Continued below)
Off the track, the life change autumn development was Lyles’ engagement to Jamaican quartermiler Junelle Bromfield, announced to the world on social media. The couple also took up residence in a newly acquired home. “She knew about the house before she knew about the proposal,” Lyles says. A wedding date? “2026 is what we’re thinking. And we’re also thinking closer to the beginning of the year, March or April.”
Also in the fall, season 2 of the Netflix series Sprint rolled out — with Noah’s storyline naturally prominent. In December, teamed with Rai Benjamin and Grant Holloway, Lyles dropped a new podcast series, Beyond The Records. Taking track & field to a wider audience is a cherished Lyles goal, as he makes clear in the chat below, and early this winter he confirmed the hype for a match sprint over 60m with Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. Date announcement coming soon?
T&FN: First of all, congratulations on getting that gold in Paris.
Lyles: Thank you. Thank you very much.
T&FN: You’re engaged now.
Lyles: Yes, I’m an engaged man. Crazy, right?
T&FN: Good stuff happens. That was a pretty cool way you popped the question. Am I looking at Noah Lyles 2.0, 3.0, 4.0? I mean, I’m thinking maybe just in terms of Olympiads, but…
Lyles: Shoot. I don’t know. Well, I’m about to go into my ninth [post-high school] year, so I guess 9.0.
T&FN: [laughs] OK. Just getting the PR in the Olympic final, that had to be rather rewarding.
Lyles: Oh yeah.
T&FN: I know you always say you want to be the best and your standards are high, but it’s gotta be nice to achieve the goal.
Lyles: Yeah. I mean, I could care less what the time was. It’s the fact that I came 1st, that was definitely the marker. You know, I could run the second-fastest time in the world, but if the World Record was dropped on me, it doesn’t matter. All that really matters is getting the win.
T&FN: Understood. It’s been kind of cool for us on the outside to get some glimpses into the process. I enjoyed the Sprint series [2 seasons so far]. What was it like doing that? You’re different from some athletes. You really put yourself out there. How do you make that work with keeping your focus, as you manage to do, for doing what you need to do on the track?
Lyles: Yeah, I guess I’ve already been doing a lot of that stuff anyway, you know, with my YouTube channel. And I did my own docuseries, actually at the same time that Netflix was shooting the first season of Sprint. So having cameras around me has never been a crazy thing. I mean, I don’t need to be anybody else than me. You know, all I gotta do is be Noah and Noah’s gonna be shown [laughs]. So it’s not gonna change the way I do workouts, not gonna change the way I talk. Of course, I’m gonna try to keep it as PG as possible because there are gonna be kids watching.
But other than that, I’m not gonna change. I’m still the same me, you know, if there’s a camera there or not.
T&FN: OK. Was there an accommodation that you had to reach over time with Lance [coach Lance Brauman]? A coach may view it differently. Or has he always kind of understood that this is you and that this works for you? There are other athletes that maybe it wouldn’t work for.
Lyles: I’d say that I definitely prepped him over time. You know, going back to the YouTube channel. First I’d say I brought out maybe one or two camera guys like once a month. And then maybe it was once every two weeks, and so on and so forth. Just being very transparent with Coach B was the important part. You know, nobody wants somebody just springing up to your training. You want to know who’s coming to training and you want to be prepared.
And also respecting the other athletes who are running. So making sure that everybody else felt comfortable — if somebody didn’t then staying away or telling every athlete, “Hey, if my camera guy is in your way, tell ‘em to get out the way [laughs]. This is just as much your practice as it is mine and you’re entitled to getting the best training. So if my guys are in your way, tell ‘em.”
And it’s the same thing when you’ve actually got a bigger camera in your face. It’s like, Hey guys, I want you guys to be able to see it, but at the same time, I gotta do the thing that makes you wanna shoot me, which is practice and win. So if you’re in the practice window, get out the way [laughs].
T&FN: Makes sense. We ran an article about Sprint Season 2 for which T&FN correspondent Rich Sands spoke with a couple of the producers. With regard to the episode covering your catching Covid in Paris before the 200, the producers were just so complimentary of you actually letting them in, in that down moment when the second part of your Olympic dream had been stopped by illness. Were you equally comfortable having that documented for television?
Lyles: It was uncomfortable, but also comfortable. I mean, I wanted to tell the story. I still haven’t really gotten to tell the story in the full length. It was funny because at one point, you know, I was getting mocked for claiming that I had Covid and people not believing me. It goes back and there’s all these videos of them mocking me: “You didn’t have Covid.”
And I was like, I literally have the papers. I actually gave it to Netflix to use. They just decided not to use it. But at one point I was just gonna post it on social media. And Junelle was like, “No, don’t do that. You don’t need to give them a response. You know what you had and if they want to believe it, they can believe it. They don’t. They don’t.”
And I was like, “You know what? You’re right. That is the case.” But it was very hard for me to watch the last episode. ’cause that’s the episode of Sprint in the second season that talks about Covid. It was very hard for me to watch it. I was with Junelle and my chiropractor at the time, and we were in my living room watching it.
T&FN: Did you get to see it ahead of time?
Lyles: No, no. I saw it at the same time as everybody else. I saw it the first day that it came out. It was very — I was almost gonna leave the room, but my chiro and Junelle said, “You have to watch it. You did this, you fought through Covid and got the bronze medal. This is not something to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of.”
And I was like, “You’re right.” It wasn’t what I wanted. It’s still uncomfortable to watch, but they are right. (Continued below)
T&FN: Do you draw energy from your meet walk-ins in front of the cameras and the showman stuff you do that not every athlete does? I’m trying to understand how that works together with performance on the track and if there’s a synergy.
Lyles: Yeah, I mean, it’s a similar energy to “feel good, train good, run good.” If you feel your best, you’re gonna run your best. If you feel like you’re on top of the world, you’re probably going to feel like that when you run as well.
You know, let’s say you’re listening to your favorite song before you go into your heaviest lift. You know you’re gonna be more pumped. That’s a similar energy to I want to look and feel as good going into these track meets as possible. It’s gonna make me feel like I’m gonna do something special. Now if you just go in and you’re like, “Oh, it’s just another day,” that’s a very blah-blah mentality. That’s not really gonna get you up. You know, this is a special day. Let’s commend it for the special day that it is.
T&FN: You’ve had a stellar support team around you for many years now — your mom, your brother, your coach, all the medical support people. What have you drawn from having Junelle there over the last — what, two years?
Lyles: Two years. We’ve been friends for seven, but it’s kind of been like an on-off friendship.
T&FN: Was there a spark at the beginning that didn’t take or what?
Lyles: Distance. Her being a part of a training group in Jamaica, MVP, just made it very difficult for us to be able to meet. I mean, she trained 6 out of the 7 days and I trained. I have weekends off and Wednesdays are somewhat off. It just made it almost impossible for us to be able to meet.
T&FN: Did she decide to come and join Lance’s group largely to be with you?
Lyles: No, she actually came [to the Orlando area] and joined Gary Evans’ group. She was with them for about 2 months and then adidas offered her a small contract. And they said if you do run with adidas, we’d give you money to pay for Coach Lance Brahman, but not for Gary Evans. So monetarily it made sense to switch over, and she was only 10 minutes away, so…
T&FN: The Jamaica-U.S. rivalry…
Lyles: It’s a great rivalry.
T&FN: It’s like you’re with the enemy. Or maybe it’s viewed that way more from the Jamaican side?
Lyles: Well, it is interesting because everybody has their own opinion. And what’s funny is, I wasn’t the enemy until Jamaica got a champion. So until they thought they could beat me, they decided to support me. As soon as they found somebody who they thought could beat me…
T&FN: When Kishane Thompson showed up in late 2023?
Lyles: Thompson and a little bit of Oblique [Seville]. But mostly Thompson. That’s when they were like, “Nah, we don’t support you anymore [laughs].” Which is fine. I completely understand it. If I have a dog in the fight, I’m gonna cheer on my dog [laughs].
T&FN: What about the people inside the Jamaican Team? Does Junelle get any friction from them?
Lyles: Oh, no. I mean, these are people that we’ve known our whole lives. I’ve known many people on the Jamaican team since I was like 14, 15 years old, going through World Juniors and World Youths. So a lot of people might think everybody has animosity to each other. To be honest, a lot of us are just friends. ’cause we’ve been through this all together for so long. Most of us know everybody who’s showing up.
Now Kishane was definitely a new face, but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t been in the track world before.
T&FN: Have you had conversations with him?
Lyles: I actually have. He’s a really cool guy. A nice anime lover, as well. So we have a few conversations here and there. He’s very diligent and he knows his greatness and he wants to achieve it. That’s something that I really respect about him.
T&FN: How important is that you have opponents like that for your motivation?
Lyles: I’m going to go after it regardless, but it’s always great to have competition. Iron sharpens iron, you know. We all eat and we all get better together. So the better the competition, the higher we rise.
Kishane ran his 9.7 and that put everybody else on alert, you know. Till then 9.80 was probably what everybody was thinking would be the benchmark. Or if you ran 9.79 they thought that would be the benchmark of what you needed to win the Olympics. But now that he ran his 9.77, it’s like, “Oh shoot, we need to get back into it. We need to put our nose deeper into the grind to make sure that we’re gonna be prepared for anything that happens.”
T&FN: Any thoughts on Fred Kerley? The Sprint series and some of his comments last year suggested there’s no warm and fuzzy relationship between you.
Lyles: Well, I mean, it’s funny you say that. I just never get a read of Fred. I’ve never been a good reader of Fred. Sometimes we have normal conversations, sometimes we don’t. And that’s fine. I wouldn’t say that I dislike him at all. I actually do like him. I like his mindset. I feel like our mindsets are actually decently kind of similar. We are gonna state what our goal is and we’re gonna do it.
I mean, he put out his tweet of he’s gonna break the World Record. Did I think he was gonna break the World Record? No.
T&FN: You made that clear in that first episode of the second season of Sprint.
Lyles: Yeah. But did I think that he was gonna do everything possible to make sure that it could happen? Yes. And do I think that he’s training in a position to put himself to run a World Record? Yes. So I respect that. (Continued below)
T&FN: You’ve mentioned before, if I’m not mistaken, that you want to be like a superhero. What does that mean to you?
Lyles: Personally? I think of myself more as an icon. A superhero is a little too clean and polished. And as a human, we’re just not clean and polished. We’re not black and white. You know, superheroes are fictional characters and some of them are just — You can take Superman. Superman tries not to kill. I mean, you’re gonna be fighting some pretty hard people that you might have to kill ‘cause they’re gonna kill more people. We’re getting real crazy, really off topic.
But essentially the idea is I’m human and I’m not as black and white as I’m a good or bad person. And it’s your job to figure me out. I’m gonna try and give you as much information, but you know, if you’re going to categorize me off of one quote, you’re not doing your job.
T&FN: I can’t argue with that. LA 28? There will be plenty of meets before that. There’s even that new WA Ultimate Championships coming in 2026. But what does it mean to you for the sport to have a U.S. Olympics that is a stage for you to shine on?
Lyles: You know, I’ve been thinking about that. Would it be crazy if I didn’t go?
T&FN: [laughs] Is that a possibility?!
Lyles: You want to hear a crazy thought? Let’s say this. Let’s say that some big event in the U.S. was created where I was racing some person who’s probably not in the track world but people think is fast and I win and it generates more hype and more excitement than anything that’s ever been seen besides the Olympics?
OK. Then I might go to the World Championships, I win another title, keep the title of world’s fastest man — but I’d still always have it because for the next 4 years I have the Olympic title. Then I start a league that’s kind of based a little different, but it constantly has the idea of “world’s fastest man” in it. So everybody has this idea that I’m always the world’s fastest man until we get to the next Olympics.
Say, I don’t go to the Olympics and somebody else gets the title, what’s the first thing they’re gonna think of when that person wins?
T&FN: Rematch. Or rather, a match with Noah Lyles.
Lyles: Noah Lyles — ’cause Noah Lyles is the world’s fastest man. I’m saying it [laughs]. This is just a thought! But it’s a concept that I feel nobody’s ever thought of. A rematch. It gives even more energy to somebody else having the title. It’s like, well, they now have to go at each other because one’s claiming that he’s the world’s fastest man and the other’s claiming that he’s the world’s fastest man.
Oh gosh, who did Michael Johnson race in the 150 [11 months after the ’96 Olympics]?
T&FN: Donovan Bailey.
Lyles: That was worth $2 million or something [Bailey pocketed $1 million for his win after Johnson pulled up mid-race; each got a $500,000 appearance fee]. It’s a similar situation. You have that aggressor and with that first interaction of me racing somebody who wasn’t in the track world gained attention. Now it’s somebody who is in the track world gaining attention and now it’s solely on track.
That’s a crazy concept. But it could be one of the craziest, put-together duals, track meets ever created.
But I do want to go! [laughs] I do want to go to LA. I’m very excited about it. There are so many [Americans] who, one, don’t even get to make it to the Olympics, but two, to have it on home soil. It would be an amazing experience.
T&FN: What would Snoop Dogg say if you didn’t show up? [laughs]
Lyles: He’d probably hit me with, “What you cooking, nephew?”
T&FN: Do you feel fairly optimistic for the sport right now, that there could be some new avenues where things get a little better? Or are we still spinning our wheels?
Lyles: No, I actually do. I think that [as we’re] coming off of Sprint, coming off of the last Olympics and seeing and showing athletes that if you are showing your personalities to the right people, you will gain notoriety. We’ve seen Alexis [Ohanian] with Athlos. Michael has raised a lot of money to put into Grand Slam Track. Obviously there is interest here.
My agent said something that really resonated with me. He said, “The sport isn’t dying, it just needs a little help.” And if all these people who raised all this money came together instead of trying to create their own thing, I mean, we could end up with something that has tens of millions of dollars [behind it] that we could create [together].
That would be so much more powerful than everybody trying to do their own thing and it not going well — and then they’re like, “Well, I’m losing money in this, so I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”
T&FN: Then there’s another negative story for track & field if it goes that way.
Lyles: Exactly. But I have true faith that I can see a world where that happens. Instead of everybody tries to do their own thing. They come together and make a super event.
