The most important 29 seconds of Noah Lyles’ life
Credit to Author: Aishwarya Kumar| Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2024 16:41:17 EST
Noah Lyles discusses his mental health around Tokyo 2020 and how he felt racing in front of an empty stadium. (1:16)
NOAH LYLES FLASHES his radiant smile as he struts into the lounge on the 10th floor of the Nasdaq building in New York’s Times Square. He is decked out in all white — a glittery Armani jacket, white pants, white shoes, white sunglasses and white pearls he has draped along his braided hairline. He has even painted his nails in a pearly white polish.
Surrounded by a dozen cameramen, he sticks out his tongue. Then he wipes his smile away. Straight face. Then he brings back his grin. His face moves seamlessly as the flashes go on and off.
“Have y’all gotten what you need?” he asks.
It’s two weeks before the U.S. Olympic trials and nearly two months before the Olympic Games where he seems destined to make history as the fastest man on the planet. His journey has demanded so much more than outrunning opponents. He has overcome asthma, depression and disappointment. Finally, the moment is his.
On this sunny June day, Lyles has stepped away from the track for the prescreening of the Netflix documentary “Sprint.” He’s one of the main characters.
Lyles walks into the theater room for a fireside conversation. He sits on a chair in the center of the stage and picks up the mic.
Sanya Richards-Ross, the 400-meter gold medalist in London, showers him with titles as she introduces him to the crowd. “The face of track and field.” “World champion.” And then, “Olympic champion.”
Lyles shakes his head and the smile disappears from his face. The camera flashes go on and off.
“No. Not an Olympic champion,” he says. “Not yet.”
LYLES SAT UP in his bed in the dead of night and tried to stay silent. He was just 3 years old and the cough that had come out of nowhere weeks earlier refused to leave. Night after night, he struggled to breathe in, breathe out. The coughs came in fits.
“My poor siblings,” Lyles says. “We slept in the same room.”
On many nights his mom tiptoed into his room in their home in Gainesville, Florida. She propped Noah up and held him as he tried to fall asleep. She sat there for hours, worrying and rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“He couldn’t eat without coughing. He couldn’t play,” Keisha Caine Bishop says. “His quality of life went down.”
Doctors told Keisha that her oldest son had reactive airway disease, which meant irritants such as pollen could set off a cough. Sometimes the wheezing got so bad that Keisha would rush him to the emergency room. The cough led to ear infections. And more doctors. When Lyles was 5, an especially bad bout of coughing and wheezing sent him back to the ER.
“Can you ask the doctor to please make me better?” Noah said to Keisha, holding her hands. Keisha smiled sadly at her child. “Yes, baby, we’re going to try our best.”
The attending doctor ran some tests and concluded that Lyles had asthma. He put Noah on a nebulizer treatment and sent him home. Keisha researched ways to minimize the attacks. A main culprit? Dust. She ripped up their carpets, took down the curtains and threw away all the stuffed toys. She bought an air purifier and had an HVAC technician clean out their air ducts. She swapped dairy products for greens. She made juice out of carrots, beets and celery, and that became the first thing Noah drank — without fussing — every morning. Keisha homeschooled her three children so she could focus on Noah’s needs.
Despite Keisha’s efforts, Noah was largely stuck inside and needed an outlet for his boundless energy. Drawing anime characters and superheroes helped him pass the time. The speedy and agile Spider-Man was his favorite. He filled his notebook with his intricate sketches.
Finally, when Lyles was 7, doctors removed his tonsils and adenoids to make it easier for him to breathe. When he woke up after surgery, Lyles took in the biggest breath of air in his life. I can finally go play basketball. Soon, he was playing tag with his friends, and they struggled to keep up. “Everybody starts scattering, because they know that somebody’s about to be it, and it could be them at any moment that I choose,” Noah says now, laughing.
When Noah was 12, he woke up one morning, his lungs congested, his breathing coming out in short gasps. Keisha rushed him to the hospital. He was diagnosed with swine flu, a virus that affected millions of Americans in 2009. The doctor hooked him up to a breathing machine, as Keisha stood by his bed, holding his hands.
Noah stayed in the hospital for two days. It took him two weeks to be able to breathe normally and to stop coughing. And then it was back to running.
“I’m a kid, and I’m going to just go run through the wall, you know?” Noah says, laughing again. “If I die, I die, but I’m going to die a happy kid.”
HAPPINESS, TO LYLES, is speed. His dad, Kevin Lyles, won a gold medal as an alternate in the 4×400 relay at the 1995 world championships. His mom was an All-American sprinter at Seton Hall. When he was 11 or 12 years old, Lyles began running the 100 and 200 meters at local meets, and he blew the other kids away. A few years earlier he couldn’t imagine running for fun. Now he was running so fast and winning by so much that races were borderline boring.
His parents separated when Lyles was in seventh grade, and Keisha moved with the kids to Virginia, enrolling Noah and his younger brother Josephus at T.C. Williams (now renamed Alexandria City High School), which had a standout track program.
The Noah Lyles story everybody there talks about to this day happened in P.E. class. The teacher took his class to a grass field near campus and separated them into two groups. He asked Noah’s group to run four laps and watched them set off. He then walked over to the other group to give them instructions. The teacher peered back at Noah’s group and saw him standing in the field, hands on hips. The other kids in the group were still running — and not even close to finishing the course. He walked over and asked Noah why he wasn’t running. “You asked me to run four laps, and I did,” Noah said. The teacher did not believe Noah. He accused him of only running three. “I’ll show you again,” Noah said. The P.E. teacher clicked his stopwatch and Noah ran around the field four times. It took him 7 minutes, 15 seconds, half the time it was taking the other kids.
The P.E. teacher told the rest of the school about Noah, and Michael Hughes, the track coach, showed up to watch the next day. He still remembers his first thought when he saw Noah run for the first time.
“This is how Beethoven’s music teacher must have felt,” Hughes says.
As a freshman, Noah outran almost everybody in the sprints — not just in the school, but in the entire state. But up until his sophomore year, Noah came home from races exhausted. As he’d grown older, and his lungs got stronger, his asthma got better — he didn’t devolve into coughs or need to be rushed to the ER anymore. But his asthma made the recovery after a race agonizing. If a race happened on the weekend, he often missed school on Monday. “He would be in bed for two days after a race because it just wiped him out,” Keisha says.
Watching her son struggle, Keisha regularly asked him, “What is it that you want out of life? What is your purpose on this earth?”
Noah simply said: to run really fast.
Keisha committed to doing everything she could to make Noah’s dream possible. She reached out to doctors and specialists, who recommended a regimen of vitamins and supplements to build up Noah’s weak lungs. Slowly, Noah began to get stronger, and even faster.
When Noah was a sophomore, he represented Team USA in the Youth Olympics in China and won gold in the 200 meters. He set a personal best of 20.71 in the semifinals and won the final in 20.80. “I took the win from the Jamaicans. I took the win from everybody else,” he said after the race.
When Noah turned 16, Keisha reached out to Diana McNab, who was her sports psychologist at Seton Hall, and asked her to work with Noah. She knew her son was physically gifted, and she wanted to make sure he was mentally prepared as well. McNab lived in Denver and had helped several high-performing athletes. One day, McNab suggested a hiking trip and watched as Noah packed his inhaler and checked twice to make sure that he still had it.
During the hike, a look of confusion crossed Noah’s face.
“Why do people hike?” he turned around and asked McNab.
“Because it’s beautiful and it’s outside,” she responded.
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Running is the only way to go.”
SPEED BECAME LYLES’ OBSESSION.
“His biggest asset was his tenacity in training,” Hughes says. “He would push himself to the very limits every time.”
Lyles devised ways to set himself apart in the 200 meters, focusing on the curve. He sat with Hughes and talked physics: feet angles, weight distribution, momentum, force. His understanding of the human body and its ability to generate speed seemed innate to Hughes. But understanding was one thing. Executing was another.
“It took us a long time to refine it,” Hughes says.
By the time Lyles was a senior, he had perfected how to lean his shoulders into the lane to keep his speed through the curve and then slingshot out of it.
Just in time for the 2016 Olympic track trials.
“Mom,” Lyles said just before trials. “I’m going to make the Olympic team.”
Keisha burst into laughter. “You’re a senior in high school. Don’t you mean 2020?”
“No,” Lyles said. “I mean 2016.”
Lyles, who had committed to Florida, made the final of the 200 at the trials. He finished fourth after three Olympians — 34-year-old Justin Gatlin, 30-year-old LaShawn Merritt and 25-year-old Ameer Webb.
The fourth-place finish emboldened Lyles. If I can almost beat grown adults as an 18-year-old, imagine what I can do with more training and growth.
After the race, Lyles turned pro, signed with Adidas and decommitted from Florida.
Around the same time, his asthma attacks largely subsided, thanks to his supplements, his USATF-approved medication and air purifiers for his hotel room. His breathing struggles went away when he jumped in the tub and took a long, hot bath and waited for his sinuses to clear.
By 2018, he was dominating the 200 meters. He got the word “icon” tattooed on his torso. In 2019, he won his first world championship and vowed he was only getting started.
All signs pointed to Lyles winning the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
KEISHA PUT TOGETHER a care package filled with cleaning supplies, disinfectants, soaps and masks and mailed it to Noah soon after the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020. She was living in Maryland, and Noah was training in Florida. She worried about people hoarding supplies from grocery stores. More than that, she worried that Noah’s asthma made him especially susceptible to the disease.
Noah shared her concern. He stocked up on masks. He rarely left his apartment after his training venue shut down. He used delivery services for food and groceries.
On May 25, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, reigniting the Black Lives Matter movement. Lyles sat in his apartment and scrolled through his phone, his mind churning with anger and then despair. How can I make my voice heard?
He called Keisha. “Are we even safe?” he asked.
When the travel restrictions lifted, Keisha flew to Orlando. Masked, she walked into Noah’s apartment. When she saw his face, her stomach constricted.
“He had no light in his eyes,” Keisha says.
A few years earlier, the Lyles family had taken the Birkman assessment — a thorough test that reveals a person’s underlying needs that drive and inspire them — and Noah’s results came back 99 out of 100 for social interactions. He was a pure extrovert, and he thrived on conversing and sharing energy and ideas with people.
Now, Noah didn’t want to do anything. He didn’t want to leave his apartment. He didn’t want to interact with people.
The pandemic and the murder of George Floyd made everything seem dire. He lost his purpose. He lost his drive.
Keisha called Noah’s therapist and informed her what she saw. Together, they made an appointment with a psychiatrist. Noah was diagnosed with clinical depression, and he was prescribed medication. He posted on social media that he was on antidepressants. He wanted people who were living with mental illness to know that they weren’t alone.
He slowly resumed his workouts ahead of the 2021 track season. He received his COVID-19 vaccine. The antidepressants, too, began to take effect. They also contributed to him gaining eight unwanted pounds.
Still, Noah tried. Most meets leading up to the Tokyo Olympics happened in empty stadiums, and Noah called McNab. “What am I going to do?” he asked her. He had always drawn energy from the crowds.
“‘You’re going to pretend that you feel great for 19 seconds, who the frick can’t fake that, Noah?'” McNab told him. “He became the actor and acted [like] himself.”
At the U.S. trials, Lyles wore a black glove and raised his fist before the 100.
“We’re still dying in the street,” he said to the media after he finished seventh and failed to qualify for the Olympics. “…This needs to stop.”
He secured his first trip to the Olympics when he won the 200 in 19.74 seconds.
Still, his running felt off to Lyles and looked off to his coaches. They attributed it to the extra weight and the antidepressants. Mentally, he was feeling better, so he consulted with his mom and his doctors and decided to stop taking antidepressants.
At the Tokyo Olympics, in an empty stadium, Lyles finished third in the 200, in 19.74 seconds. He sobbed through his postrace interview as he addressed his depression and his feeling of hopelessness as a Black American.
As she watched, Keisha blamed herself for her son’s disappointing season. “Noah,” she said after sitting him down. “I really beat myself up a lot. Did we make the right decision?”
Noah didn’t pause to think before answering. “Mom, we made the right decision.”
“I have to remind myself, we appreciate the spotlight, but at the end of the day, this is my kid, so what’s more important — the mental health of my kid, or him running fast?” Keisha says.
“We chose his mental health.”
USAIN BOLT CLAPPED his hands as Lyles blazed down the track in Jamaica last year. The world-record holder smiled wide as Lyles did what he always does these days: He won the 200.
Lyles walked over to Bolt and delivered an enthusiastic hug. “Keep the same attitude, bruh,” Bolt said to Lyles. “This sport needs that s—, we need that personality.”
After his disappointment in Tokyo, Lyles pinpointed Paris as the place he would become an Olympic champion. He started lifting heavier, and he converted those eight extra pounds into eight pounds of muscle. On the track, he focused on getting out of the starting blocks faster.
He has seen the returns. Since Tokyo, Lyles has won three individual golds at the world championships, including the 100- and 200-double in 2023. At the 2022 world championships, he broke Michael Johnson’s American record when he finished in 19.31. It’s the third-fastest time ever, behind only Bolt (19.19) and Yohan Blake (19.26).
His performances before and after races have been equally entertaining. He screams to the skies as his name is announced. He brings anime cards to the starting blocks. He paints his nails, wears bling and colors his hair in bright shades. He once did an alley-oop celebration after crossing the finish line that angered even his mom. “I throw myself on the mercy of the court,” Noah said to Keisha after she told him to knock it off. Sponsors, including Adidas, Celsius, Omega, Comcast and Visa, have ponied up.
At news conferences, he’s bold and brash and unfiltered. After the 2023 world championships, he riled up the sports world when a reporter asked how track and field could grow its popularity.
“You know the thing that hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have ‘world champion’ on their head,” Lyles said. “World champion of what? The United States?”
The comment went viral. Kevin Durant wrote, “Somebody better help this brother,” on social media. Draymond Green wrote, “When being smart goes wrong.”
The attention — good and bad — energizes Lyles. He knows the spotlight stays only as long as he wins on the track, and he relishes the work.
He goes so far as to script his races with his sports psychologist before he runs.
I walk into the arena. I am smiling widely, my Cheshire cat smile. I walk over to my blocks. I jump — high — tucking my knees to my chest. For a split second, I hover over the earth above all of my opponents. I land — softly. I look down at my lane. Now I bend low. I place my feet on the blocks. On your marks. Get set. Go. My hands come up to my chin. My knee comes up in front of me. I’m jackhammering to the track. I slingshot out of the curve. I’m racing past the rest of the crowd. I can feel the tape brushing my chest. I’m number one. I’m laughing, my hands in the air, my gaze to the sky.
The two emotions that remain the same in every script? Precision — and “having fun, being joyful throughout,” Lyles says.
“He’s racing from his heart,” McNab says. “It’s all spiritual.”
It’s also technical. Lyles has trained his 27-year-old, 5-foot-11, 170-pound body to apply 300 pounds of force onto the starting blocks and propel himself to a top speed, he says, of 26 mph. “If I ran in a school zone, I’d get a ticket,” Lyles said in June during his appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
Lyles hopes it’s also historical. He wants to leave Paris with four gold medals, in the 100, 200, 4×100 relay and 4×400 relay. Nobody has ever done it. Only nine men since 1904 have won double gold in the 100 and 200 individual sprints. He also wants Bolt’s world records.
“What do I got to do to be considered the greatest when I leave this sport,” Lyles says. It’s a sentence, not a question. “Grabbing an Olympic gold. Grabbing a world record. I want to get it.”
LYLES TROTS DOWN the ramp and slaps the outstretched hands of fans lining the entryway to the Icahn Stadium track. He’s decked out in a bright yellow onesie, his hair adorned with pearls, for his first 200-meter race of the 2024 season. He pumps his fists in the air and then takes off — fast — for the starting blocks.
Exactly 19.77 seconds after he bounds out of the blocks at the New York City Grand Prix, he crosses the finish line. An organizer hands him a winner’s bouquet, and he throws it into the air. A young girl catches it, grinning ear to ear.
He walks over to the stands and beckons the photographers to change their position so they can capture him from a new angle.
Lyles reaches his arms wide. He grins. Then, he wipes the smile away. Straight face. Then he squats, brings his grin back. Flashes go on and off as his face moves seamlessly.
He grabs a mic from the organizer and his radiant smile grows wide. He speaks directly to the fans.
“The gold,” he says, “is ours.”