PUT YOURSELF for a moment in Noah Lyles’ shoes. Good on ya if you can keep up with the foremost male sprinter of the era!
You’re in the first non-pandemic “off year” of your career — it’s debatable now that such seasons exist with WA’s new Ultimate Championships on the schedule — and a decade has flashed by since you broke into the limelight to nearly make the U.S. Olympic team for Rio at age 18. A whole lotta championship racing has followed that 20.09 then-PR for 4th in the Trials 200.
To review the gold tally, that’s 8 world titles: 4 in the 200, 1 in the 100 and 3 in the 4×1. Oh, and also that Olympic 100 gold in ’24. You’re also history’s No. 3 all-time in the 200 with that 19.31 from the ’22 Worlds. Your 100 PR, the 9.79 that captured gold at the Olympics, positions you at =No. 6 on the U.S. ATL.
Major championships are your wheelhouse. How, in the year when you’ll turn 29 come July, will you approach this season without an outdoor Worlds or Olympics?
Lyles gave answer after his elite circuit opener at the New Balance Indoor GP. He had come up just 0.01 short of training mate Jereem Richards with a 32.15 time. It’s still January and the mark, second-fastest of his life, was just 0.28 shy of the then-WR 31.87 he dashed at altitude in March of ’17.
He admitted to “swimming a little” in the last 50 at New Balance yet addressed that race and the season ahead: “The plan was to go all-out. Everything this year is gonna be all-out, as much as I can from the very get-go. Just jump off the cliff, you know? You can’t be scared to jump off a cliff. So, that’s what I achieved. By the end of that race I was exhausted, so that means that I did what I set out to do.”
He further asserted, “I ain’t come here to lose, but if you beat me that means that you’re a champion. That means that you put in your real heart, and that’s exactly what this year is supposed to be. Everybody come get it. If you want it, come get it. Let’s run it.”
Lyles — even with a pulling-out-all-the-stops wedding to Jamaican sprinter Junelle Bromfield on the docket for April 04, too close to the World Indoor Champs for him to make that meet — ain’t holding back.
As he explained at a press conference the day before New Balance, his fiancée fully approved the all-gas-no-brakes protocol before he and coach Lance Brauman had fully formulated the plan.
“I actually had to make a really pretty big choice this year,” he said. “Junelle was really pushing me on the idea of, you know, you kinda need to force yourself to say, ‘Hey, you’re about to go into your peak years age-wise. You need to take advantage of each year, and just because it’s an off-year doesn’t mean you should back off.’
“And I was like, ‘Dang, you’re kinda right.’ I would be very mad at myself if I didn’t go out there and give everything I had no matter the year. Just because there’s no World Championships doesn’t mean you can’t make a big event, doesn’t mean you can’t have great matchups, doesn’t mean you can’t have great competition.
“So, I need to push myself. And so, I actually decided to push myself a lot earlier in the year, and I’ve seen some amazing practices. So, this is gonna be a good year.”
Will he target any event in particular? Nope. “I’d say expect the unexpected. I’m gonna turn this year into a fan year. You know, again, sometimes you’re trapped and forced to pick for specific events, for a specific time period. [This year] there’s no holds on that. There’s no bars. There’s no one lane. Shoot, let’s go anywhere and everywhere. Let’s have some fun. Let’s go do some off-events. Let’s get into some matchups that you probably haven’t even thought of.
“I think the harder thing is convincing other track meets and sometimes other athletes to get in on you with that.
“But, hey, this is my open challenge right now. If you’re an athlete out there and you got an idea for a race, let me know. Reach out to me. Let’s get it done.”
