Can Noah Lyles Turn Olympic Beef Into Marketing Gold?

NFL personality Kay Adams asked Dolphins running back Tyreek Hill a curious question Monday: “Sprinter Noah Lyles, he said that Super Bowl champs should not consider themselves world champions. What do you think of that?” 

Lyles actually never said anything about the Super Bowl; he went on a rant last summer about NBA players calling themselves “world champions.” But Hill’s response shows a very real, two-way disrespect right now between Lyles and his counterparts in other major U.S. sports.

“Noah Lyles can’t say nothing after what just happened to him,” Hill said, referring to Lyles failing to win gold in the 200 meters at the Olympics and saying after the race that he ran it with COVID-19. “Pretend like he’s sick—I feel like that’s horseradish. So for him to do that and say that, we’re not world champions of our sport … just speak on what you know about, and that’s track.”

Hill then proceeded to ignore his own advice. “I would beat Noah Lyles” in a race, he told Adams. “I wouldn’t beat him by a lot, but I would beat Noah Lyles.” 

There is a long history of U.S. ball-sport athletes claiming they could win on the track; ironically, Hill probably has the most credible claim. He was an elite sprinter as a teenager, finishing third at the world junior championships in the 200 meters in 2012. But his times are nowhere near Lyles’s; he ran a wind-aided 9.98 in the 100 meters in junior college, two-tenths of a second slower than Lyles’s legal Olympic-winning time. 

The comment Lyles actually made that is now making the rounds all over again was about the NBA, and it was after sweeping the 100 and 200 at the track world championships in 2023. “You know what hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals, and they have ‘world champion’ on their heads,” he said. “World champion of what? The United States … there ain’t no flags in the NBA. We gotta do more. We gotta be presented to the world.”

What seemed like half the NBA was understandably offended, with Kevin Durant famously posting “somebody help this brother.”

The basketball stars that Lyles griped about last year mostly took the high road this summer as they ascended to gold while Lyles got bronze in the 200 and sat out the 4×100 with his illness. (Lyles did win the most coveted race in track, the 100.) 

But Lyles has made plenty of other enemies in the last year. Letsile Tebogo, the Botswanan runner who beat Lyles in the 200, deadpanned that he couldn’t be the face of track because he isn’t an “arrogant and loud person” like Lyles. Canada’s track federation and even Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau trolled Lyles about his reckless trash-talking after Canada won the men’s 4×100 meters.

Spend five minutes on Track Twitter and it’s clear that Lyles has legions of haters. 

On the other hand, that puts him roughly in the 0.00000001% of track and field athletes who have any broader cultural relevance at all.

Carl Lewis, the polarizing world-beater turned elder statesman of American track, intimately understands the dynamic at play here. “It may be a tough time in your life now,” Lewis tweeted at Lyles after his 200 loss, “but your antics and talent are why they watched your race.” Most track athletes are happy to compete hard and complain quietly about the lack of money in the sport. Lyles, however aggravating you may find him, is drumming up something else. “Someone has to [put] themselves out there for all of you to get attention,” Lewis wrote.

The resentment Lyles feels about the absence of attention on track clearly runs deep.

According to a Time profile from this past June, Adidas nearly blew it with Lyles when they were negotiating his latest contract. The German shoe giant thought it was schmoozing Lyles by inviting him to an event for Anthony Edwards’s new signature shoe. Instead, Lyles was wounded. “You want to invite me to [an event for] a man who has not even been to an NBA Finals? In a sport that you don’t even care about?” Lyles recounted to writer Sean Gregory. “And you’re giving him a shoe? No disrespect: the man is an amazing athlete. He is having a heck of a year. I love that they saw the insight to give him a shoe, because they saw that he was going to be big. All I’m asking is, ‘How could you not see that for me?’”

It’s unclear whether Adidas can see a signature shoe (apart from a spike) for Lyles. Adidas did eventually reach terms with him on a new contract in February, calling it the richest deal in track since Usain Bolt retired in 2017. And Lyles has endorsement deals from Visa, Omega, Celsius, Comcast, and more. 

But there’s an itch in Lyles that money alone can’t scratch. If his visions of mainstream fame are to come true, he’ll have to claw his way there despite himself.