Noah Lyles exclusive on how he wants to reinvent track & field: "I'm unlimited"
The new world 100m champion has big plans for the future of athletics and it all starts with his performances on the track. "When people come to see me, they get excited because they know a special moment is going to happen," he says.
Athletics
How do you increase the popularity of track & field? Just ask Noah Lyles.
The American sprinter has just won the men’s 100m world title at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest and is already planning for the future.
In an exclusive interview with Olympics.com less than 24 hours after triumphing in track & field’s blue ribband event, the 26-year-old revealed he has plans to turn the world of athletics on its head - and at the same time become an example for other athletes who desire to follow in his footsteps.
“I want to show people how far they can really go,” the athlete revealed to us. “I don’t want them to stop at medals. Yes, medals are nice, they get your attention. That should be the first stopping point, that should be the first check off the box.
“After you go to medals, now you go to moving outside of the sport. After you’re outside of the sport, we go and reinvent ourselves.”
Noah Lyles: 'How can we get to this higher level if we don't even respect each other?'
If anyone is in a position to talk about medals, it’s Lyles. He has four world championship golds to his name, including the last two 200m titles and, most recently, the coveted 100m crown.
But he’s also in a unique position to talk about just how to grow a sport that is not often talked about in the same lofty tones as other elite American favourites such as football and basketball.
As one of the biggest draws in athletics today, Lyles is a larger-than-life personality who is showing the way when it comes to just how an athlete can reach a larger audience.
A new docu-series on the athlete called ‘Untitled: The Noah Lyles Project’ was released just before the start of the Worlds in Budapest and more productions are in the works, with Netflix following up on their successful Formula 1 and Tour de France docu-series with another about athletics.
But for Lyles, who won 200m bronze at Tokyo 2020, there are changes that need to take place so that the track stars of today can raise their profiles and bring their sport to the wider audience it deserves.
“You look at musicians, they start having clothing brands and they start throwing fashion shows and they start hanging out with other artists,” he says.
“You look at our sport and we don’t even hang out with the athletes in our own sport. The big rock stars [from track & field] of our past and present don’t even hang out together.
“How can we get to this higher level that we all want to talk about and we aren’t even doing what’s needed to show that we respect each other?”
Noah Lyles: Taking track to the next level
In Lyles’ mind, reinventing the sport is like creating a circle.
First come the victories - of which he has many - then you need to generate interest outside of the sport and, finally, you need to bring those fans to the athletics track.
“Where are we going to push people?” he asks rhetorically. “We need to push them back into track meets, get the energy and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, I want to be there for that moment!’
"When people come to see me, they get excited because they know a special moment is going to happen.
“Whether the time is fast or not, it doesn’t matter because they know when they come to a track event I’m at, it’s going to be electric.”
Noah Lyles: "I know the 200 is mine"
Lyles now has the chance to go to Paris as a champion in both the 100m and 200m, and consolidate his position as the greatest sprinter on the planet today.
It's a role he's confident he'll fulfil as he eyes the 200m title in Budapest, starting with the heats on Wednesday 23 August.
"The 100, I believe I should have been the one to win," he says of his victory in the first individual sprint event he is running at Budapest. "The 200, I know that it's mine."
But you get the impression that these victories are just small parts of a larger, more expansive plan to take track & field to a new level.
And a lot of that hinges on the power of his own personality that he hopes will give him the opportunity to transcend the traditional boundaries of sport and reach a new audience across the world.
What are the limits of this plan for world domination? "I'm unlimited," says Lyles.