Noah Lyles and His Abundant Confidence Are Ready to Lead Team USA in Paris

With confidence aplenty, the American sprinter will head to Paris as one of Team USA's feature athletes, with his sights set on multiple gold medals.

Noah Lyles dominated in his specialty, the 200-meter dash, Saturday night, qualifying for the Olympics in record fashion. / Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

EUGENE, Ore.—The fastest man in the world did his all-a-blur routine again on Saturday. His name is Noah Lyles, and in the time it took to type that sentence, he finished half of the Olympic trials final in the 200-meter dash. He ran the second half even faster.

Against a field with more worthy sprinters than Olympic slots available, Lyles sauntered onto the track at Hayward Field shortly before 7 p.m. local time. He wore yellow Spandex, purpose in every stride and a look of steely determination. His chief competition, Kenny Bednarek and Erriyon Knighton, were introduced just before him. But let’s be honest: at this point, Lyles’s greatest competition at the Paris Olympics will be if he can meet his own standards, running the times he wants to run. If he does, he’ll bring two or three gold medals home, along with a newfound perch in the American sports consciousness.

Lyles seemed to understand that—both the stakes and just how prepared he was to render them irrelevant—before the gun sounded. No Yu-Gi-Oh! cards were pulled from his track uniform this time. Instead, when it came time for his introduction, Lyles leaned back and raised both arms toward the sky, palms outstretched, neck bent, face pointed upward. When the public address announcer said his name, he dropped both arms and let out a scream so primal that a human being with elite hearing might have heard him in Portland, 100-plus miles to the north.

That wasn’t even how Lyles spoke the loudest. His performance grabbed the megaphone. He started fast, catching Knighton, the remarkably fast 20-year-old, by the turn. Bednarek led both the others by then. But there came Lyles, each step eating into the deficit. He was sprinting, yes, but he almost looked like a galloping thoroughbred churning down the backstretch. He won. And not only did he win, again, just like last weekend in the 100-meter final, he won easily, breaking a trials record in the 200 that had stood for 28 years.

NOAH LYLES BREAKS 28-YEAR-OLD TRIALS RECORD IN THE 200M FINAL.

He, Kenny Bednarek and Erriyon Knighton qualify for the #ParisOlympics! pic.twitter.com/AUCTz14det

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) June 30, 2024

At the finish line, Lyles leaned forward, then swaggered to a stop. He nodded his head, blew a kiss and pointed skyward. But despite clocking the fastest 200-meter time in the world this year, he hardly celebrated. He certainly didn’t jog half a lap around the track the way he had last weekend, after his 100-meter finals triumph. Maybe Lyles reacted that way because the 200 is his specialty. Or maybe he’s beyond primed.

“There’s a lotta-lotta-lotta confidence,” he said afterward. Didn’t sound like bragging. Sounded like a man who knows. Same as this. “The world is ready,” Lyles said. “I can say I am, too.”

Any American sports fan looking for an athlete to follow in Paris next month would be wise to study up on Lyles. That trials record he broke on Saturday once belonged to Michael freaking Johnson. Those last 20 meters Lyles looked like he was floating, which, at least, projects that he can run ever faster … in a month … with the world watching.

Lyles seems, in other words, like he’s entering these upcoming Olympics in the best possible space he could enter them in. That’s mental. That’s physical. That’s Yu-Gi-Oh! superpowers engaged. Should he win the 100 and 200 in Paris, it won’t be the least bit surprising. Least of all to him.

If Lyles’s previous 200-meter heats looked easy, well, they unfolded that way for the athlete who did the sprinting, too. In his 200-meter semifinal, Lyles ran a 19.60, which would have set a new mark for U.S. Olympic Trials competition, if not for the wind. He then declared himself shocked at the time he registered, saying “it felt easy” and he “wasn’t even really trying.”

Anyone who landed anywhere near Lyles’s orbit in recent weeks could sense the confidence and assuredness that marked his every step and his every sentence. He offered honest answers after races and, sure, maybe it came across as bravado. That’s O.K. The truth often does.

Lyles will ride a supreme confidence into Paris, where he'll be expected to compete for multiple gold medals. / Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

Last weekend, Lyles won a tight, fast, don’t-dare-blink 100-meter dash final. He triumphed against a crowded field of elite competition. He finished in 9.83 seconds, 0.04 ahead of second-place finisher Kenny Bednarek and 0.05 faster than Fred Kerley, who finished third. Poor Christian Coleman, an Olympic silver medalist, ran a respectful 9.93 and finished a relatively distant fourth.

Lyles, meanwhile, staged a one-man show. He flashed rare Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, pulled from his singlet before races. For the 100-meter final, Snoop Dogg basically escorted Lyles out to the track.

His coach, Lance Brauman, told Lyles to “go out and handle business.” Nothing else needed to be said. Lyles, in both how he ran and what he said, entered these races with the best kind of resolve. He knew how he had practiced. His mental health was strong. He won, in other words, before he ever came to Hayward Field for trials. All he had to do was prove it.

Still, that business Brauman referenced … both he and Lyles understood that America’s latest 100-meter champ was only half done. The good news: the 100 isn’t his best event; the 200-meter dash is. Lyles spoke openly about not thinking while running at trials, about running the shorter sprint more like he typically sprints the longer one. “Every time I get that feeling, it makes the race that much more confident,” he said last weekend.

With another weekend of trials competition before the U.S. team was nearly set, Friday’s track action assumed a heightened importance—for the stage that it might set. Both the men’s and women’s 200-meter finals took place in the same two-hour stretch on Saturday evening, in front of a nearly full crowd at the track stadium with the tower and the towering speedsters sprinting underneath it.

All delivered. Sha’Carri Richardson. Gabby Thomas. Lyles, Bednarek and Knighton. All were fast. All would run in finals Saturday. In the 100-meter hurdles semifinals, a full 13 competitors ran heat times fast enough to meet their event's automatic standard for Olympic qualifying.

Minutes later, the women’s 200-meter final started. Richardson, in her semifinal, had matched her personal best time (21.92 seconds). She had watched Thomas, the bronze medal winner in that event in Tokyo, turn in a “hold my beer” response, blazing through in 21.78, good for the fastest time in the world this year.

“I was really happy. That felt like a smooth, easy run,” Thomas said. Happy with her race, undoubtedly. But also likely happy with her decision to concentrate on the 200 and not try and compete at that distance and at 400 meters.

“This is my year,” she added.

Then, on Saturday evening, she went out and proved herself correct. Just like Lyles would.

At the starting line for that final, Richardson seemed more serious than before her 100-meter triumph last weekend. She swayed the same way, but she wasn’t as bombastic. There were fewer smiles, fewer waves, and the joy she expressed before the 100 final was replaced by the most serious of expressions on her face. Perhaps that was a sign, too.

Thomas started well and only sped up from there. She took the lead for good on the final straightaway, as NBC’s broadcast cut between Hayward Field and the celebration being filmed for her family back in Florida. Richardson finished fourth. She’ll go to Tokyo, but will only compete in the 100.

Brittany Brown ran a personal best, 0.09 seconds behind Thomas’s winning 21.81, to finish second. McKenzie Long, only 23 and the reigning NCAA champ in the 100, 200 and 4X100 relay, continued a strong spring/summer, finishing third in 21.91.

“Such a great team they’re sending off to Paris,” one of NBC’s analysts said.

Indeed. Sydney McLaughlin ran her 400-meter hurdles semifinal right after that. Her 52.48-second finish was nearly a half-second ahead of the next competitor. Expect more of that, soon, in Paris, where the U.S. team looks to fulfill its grand ambitions with a medal haul not seen in decades. That starts with Lyles, who seems destined for top-level international stardom. There’s confident. And there’s him, at Hayward, this week. That’s more like certitude—at what was coming and, now, at what’s ahead.