Vintage Noah Lyles story No. 1: It’s courtesy of his mother, Keisha Bishop (no relation to me—but she is related to Noah), who recalls a morning last February, when Noah insisted on going to breakfast at Denny’s, then to the motorcycle store to buy a helmet. Keisha didn’t understand why, until the USATF Indoor Nationals in Albuquerque, when Noah walked in with a motorcycle helmet on. “Mom, you just don't get it. You don't get the vision,” Lyles told her. Keisha agreed—she did not get it. She just rolls with it.
How any one person views Noah Lyles will change this week, in Paris. His mother understands this, but she knows him. She knows that many will get things right about her son and others will get things so-so-so-so wrong.
Keisha knows that some people will see or hear her ever-more accessible son and think: “Not for me.” But she does not spend even a millisecond on the notion that her son just wants attention. She waves that nonsense away.
She always encouraged Noah and his two siblings to be whatever they wanted. She often repeated to them a quote she once saw attributed to John Lennon: “When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.”
She says that when she discovered this quote, she thought: This is Noah.
Noah Lyles is honest, engaging and often seems lost in his own version of outer space. He can come across as corny, but he doesn’t care what people think, and that’s important. He was making rap videos with his girlfriend as both prepped for the Olympics. He makes comments that sound like boasts—or worse, hubris—to many: “That’s what they all say, until they get beat!” he booms on the Netflix docuseries SPRINT.
In Paris, the 27-year-old, six-time world champion could win three, maybe even four gold medals, including The Double, the 100 meters and 200 meters. He will also race in the 4X100 relay, and has discussed running in the 4X400 relay.
“Everybody thinks that it isn’t attainable,” Lyles says. “But those are the things that I love.”
Vintage Noah Lyles story No. 2: At the U.S. Track and Field trials in June, Lyles pulled out a series of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards before races. “A lot of people were scrambling like me to figure out the meaning,” Keisha says. “I don’t know the meaning of those! It means he’s living his best life.” Then, she says, after the 200-meter finals, Lyles walked into the stadium with a toy water gun. Keisha and Noah’s father, Kevin Lyles—both former college track athletes—were confused.
Kevin asked, “I thought we were trying to make that Olympic team. Are we out here playing with toys?”
Over the past three years, everything changed for Noah Lyles, his immediate family and everyone else in his inner orbit. Before the Tokyo Games in 2021, Lyles dealt with depression and anxiety, speaking openly about having been bullied, severe bouts of childhood asthma and twin diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder and Dyslexia. He won a bronze medal in the 200 in Tokyo, his first Olympics. And he presented all his differences to the world. Burned by some people’s reactions, he sometimes retreated. But after Tokyo, he vowed to change.
“That makes a big difference. When you just stop caring about how other people view you,” Keisha says. “That’s his journey from one Olympics to another. He’s always been his own person. When we went to Tokyo, there was a lot more pressure, a lot more weight.”
Hence the focus of these past three years. As much as there were tweaks to his form or fitness, Lyles also lasered in on understanding of self and his mental health. Improving those, he discovered, made him faster. When he looked inward, he noticed how exhausted being Noah Lyles made Noah Lyles. He committed to fewer events off the track, took fewer offers and searched for balance, not more sprints. He worked to create boundaries, to worry less about pleasing those outside his circle.
And so that became his pattern—and he got faster. He spoke about wanting to “transcend” track and field, as Allyson Felix had. As his mouth motored, Lyles turned his attention to achieving The Double in Paris.
Lyles went to Budapest in August 2023 for the world championships. He won the 100. He won the 200. He anchored the gold medal–winning 4X100 relay team, becoming the first athlete to win three golds at worlds since Usain Bolt in 2015.
“Last year, he really solidified himself. Just the effort, dedication and determination it took, to say, ‘O.K., I’m going to figure this 100 meters out. I’m going to get comfortable being uncomfortable,’” Keisha says. “And then I watched him. Perform at such a high level every round. That puts him in a totally different conversation.”
His performance at the U.S. trials last month in Eugene continued to elevate Lyles’s profile. His family had to stop eating at restaurants because of the crowds. He signed thousands of autographs, starred in SPRINT, flashed Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and wore a bright red running suit and white pearls. When he entered Hayward Field at the trials, Snoop was carrying his bag stuffed with his gear. He then won the 100 and the 200 to qualify, loudly and speedily, for Paris. He discussed adding the 4X400.
There were 400-meter specialists from the U.S. who didn’t much care for Lyles’s volunteering for that relay in Paris. And there were track aficionados who scoffed when he labeled himself, on SPRINT, the world’s fastest man. Some Jamaican athletes and fans argued that Lyles had flared existing issues with comments (his girlfriend, Junelle Bromfield, is a Jamaican sprinter) voiced in public and more than once. Lyles was overconfident, to put it kindly, or arrogant. He violated the sport’s unwritten codes.
But nothing Lyles said was mean, cruel or delusional. There was a basis for everything he said. He is the fastest man in the world at the moment. He may still be after Paris, too. But his comments, true as they were, did not especially endear him to the insular community of track and field. But Noah is just trying to understand himself, and the more he understands about himself, the faster he runs.
And the faster he runs, the larger the spotlight.
And should he accomplish everything he plans, the spotlight will soon get much larger.
Vintage Noah Lyles story No. 3: Keisha recalls one time, when Noah was young, he asked for green food coloring and he got mad when she didn’t have any. It was for his clothes. He wanted to go to church dressed like Peter Pan. So Keisha bought green dye and Noah went to church looking like Peter Pan. Now, she says, he’s still dressing up.
“He’s always been really creative and quirky and just … him,” says Keisha. “He polishes his nails and wears his hair in different colors and loves fashion. I really believe he’s an artist who runs fast. That’s how I look at it. And artists are just weird.”
Can Lyles—the weird artist—become track’s first superstar since Usain Bolt?
Michael Johnson, the only man to win both the 200 and 400 meters at the same Olympics (Atlanta in 1996), is planning to start a new international track league, Grand Slam Track. The success of the league depends on closing the gap between how Americans view the sport and how much of the rest of the world views it. He needs personalities who shine in major competitions. Says Johnson, “We’re seeing the greatest collection of stand-out personalities in this sport since I was competing.”
Lyles, and such charismatic athletes as Sha’Carri Richardson and Kenny Bednarek, Johnson says, inspired the league he is creating. “The type of energy Noah brings, it’s fantastic,” Johnson says. “He’s unafraid to have that spotlight on him and go out there and perform.”
The artist is ready for his show in Paris.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Noah Lyles Doesn’t Care What You Think About Him.
