Noah Lyles on a mission
The hip hop music plays in the background as the shutter clicks away. Noah Lyles is happy to strike a range of poses in his adidas/Gucci suit during the photo shoot, very much at ease in front of the camera and accepting of the attention. This is, he knows, a crucial part of his job.
While finishing first and breaking records on the track is his vocation, the American sees it as his business to sell – whether that be himself, his sponsor’s product or even the sport he loves.
Just 24 hours before his photographic appointment, Lyles sat down with AW ahead of the 2022 World Athletics Awards ceremony. He might have been beaten to the top prize by Mondo Duplantis, but the 25-year-old had plenty of other honours from his year’s work to console himself with.
At the World Championships last summer, in front of a home crowd, he not only successfully defended his world title but also broke Michael Johnson’s 25-year-old US record in the process by running 19.31, the third-fastest time ever, and promptly ripped his sprint suit to shreds. There was a 4x100m relay silver medal to add to the collection, too.
His roar of jubilation came from an internal fire which had been fuelled by a desire to prove the doubters wrong. After missing out on becoming Olympic 200m champion in Tokyo – that title went to Canadian Andre De Grasse – a lot of the talk before Eugene focused on 18-year-old Erriyon Knighton, who had clocked a brilliant 19.49 in his 2022 season opener.
Lyles would finish first at the USATF Championships, however, before taking his opposition apart on that same Hayward Field track and winning the world title by 0.46 seconds from Kenny Bednarek and Knighton. He finished 2022 unbeaten in the 200m over 12 races, in fact, running all in under 20 seconds.
Wearing an @adidas X @gucci suit, @LylesNoah is our January cover star 🔥
Away from the track, he chats to @TimAdams76 about:
- Why T&F is ultimately a business
- Marketing yourself through a Youtube docuseries
- Inspired by John Carlos and Tommie Smith📸 @DanVernonPhoto pic.twitter.com/ANrqAQ1QQw
— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) January 5, 2023
“It’s definitely my greatest season ever,” says an excited Lyles. “I’ll constantly rewatch my races over again. It was that climax over again. In Oregon I went mad and produced the fastest time I’d run in years. It was important to have fans [back in the stands] and it was important to have that energy back. For me, it was a huge deal to be that showman and give back to the people.
“I always describe the emotion as you have your dream in the shower, the hype, the adrenaline, how the announcers talk about you and how that will feel. It was pure adrenaline, enjoyment and excitement. Shoot for the stars and aim for the moon. There’s that point you where you think you can shoot for the world record [Bolt’s 19.19].”
Lyles is the opposite of enigmatic and there’s an admirable, intriguing restlessness about him. He is an engaging, complex character and has spoken openly in recent years about his struggles with depression, as well as dealing with dyslexia and being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as a youngster. Being the focus of a crowd, he admits, can be both delightful and difficult.
“The joyful moments are just that much more exciting when we reach out to people we can connect with,” he says. “Usually those are people who have been on the journey with you, so when you have family or team members, you can confide in them and truly enjoy those moments."
“The part where it gets scary if you don't have that and you find yourself searching outside of the safe area to enjoy those moments. They could be celebrating because you did well and they want a piece of that or have they actually seen your journey with all the setbacks?
“It's a fine line between celebrating with an athlete and taking from an athlete as we only have so much energy to give. It's very hard for us to say: ‘Hey, I don't have the social energy to celebrate with you but thank you for being a fan’.
“Sometimes I can't take pictures with people any more as I just don't have the energy. It's a hard discussion to have because I love crowds and the energy because I'm going to give you my best.”
Despite the energy involved, connecting with large numbers of people is at the top of Lyles’ to do list in 2023. He wants more of the public to come along for the ride and to understand what it takes to become an elite athlete – mentally, physically and emotionally. While others have talked about what could be done better to widen athletics’ reach, he has taken action.
Last year, the 25-year-old published the first of his documentary-series episodes on YouTube, outlining his journey at the USATF New York City Continental Tour Gold event. He clocked 19.61 but insists the programme took on way more importance than what happened on the track.
The first episode was watched by 40,000 people and, since then, five more episodes have followed. Lyles’ social media following of 322,000 on Instagram and 60,000 on Twitter is largely down to success on the track and now the aim is to immerse those fans in what he does and how he does it. He would also like other athletes to do the same and start building a collective momentum.
“I wanted to do a docu-series in the build-up to the 2019 World Championships but I didn’t have my own money,” he says. “Truthfully, that is the reason [why it didn’t happen]. I knew the standard that I wanted it. Now I’ve done it I want others to do it and realise that this is the standard we need to have it at. As soon as we did the first video – the one in New York – I thought it was amazing and we had something.”
Lyles is from a generation of athletes that are now focusing on digital storytelling in a multi- dimensional way. Pole vault superstar Mondo Duplantis has recently had his Born To Fly Documentary released in cinemas in Sweden while 1500m world champion Jake Wightman has produced behind the scenes training diaries and his fellow Briton Charles Hicks has created a vlog on YouTube to document his time of being an athlete at Stanford University.
They follow in the wake of Amazon Prime and Netflix who have altered the sporting landscape with docu-series on football, F1 and basketball. After All Or Nothing, Drive To Survive and The Last Dance, tennis has its own series called Break Point out on January 13. Cricket and golf will also follow suit later in 2023. It’s a trend that’s becoming impossible to ignore.
“The problem with track is that our idea of our limit is so low that we don’t even don’t put ourselves to the limit of where other sports are at and have been,” Lyles adds. “You can’t say you want the money of other sports without having everything else.
“Like everything in this world, it evolves, and track and field is not a sport I’ve seen evolve well enough with the times.”
In the immediate aftermath of his gold medal in Eugene, Lyles spoke at length about wanting to be “an influencer” and his belief that his fellow athletes would do well to think differently about how they can use their major championships opportunities. He also recently advised the next generation at the USATF convention on how to attract sponsors and shape the business model in track and field to their benefit.
“These companies are going to be looking for you at the World Championships,” Lyles adds. “Let’s say you create your own docu-series and you tell your own story well, which could include 30,000 people watching it every week, you have a platform that is constantly engaged with the audience. These companies will see that and [think] ‘we know who to target and we want to be a part of your journey’.
“Track and field is a business. My job as an athlete is to sell shoes for Adidas and not even spikes, training shoes. When I do a [social media] post it’s probably me promoting shoes because more people are likely to buy them.
“If I have a platform that engages with a lot of people that means they now have access to sell that shoe so I become more marketable and valuable. What a lot of people confuse it with is how much winning are you doing. Now it matters a little bit because it makes more money in your contract. But if you are more presentable and on TV more then people will pay for that.”
Lyles has become more inclined to use his platform to make societal points, too. In 2021, he wore a black glove at some of his races in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and in an echo of the famous protest made by John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics.
Some words of wisdom from the former have stuck.
“John Carlos is a character but he's so inspirational,” says Lyles. “He was giving a speech and he said: ‘A shy man will never eat, he'll just starve to death’. I remember when I heard that and I thought: ‘I'm not a shy man. I take every opportunity and if one doesn't appear then I will find it or make a way to create one’.”
» This is article appeared in our January issue of AW magazine
