Josephus Lyles: Stronger together with my brother Noah
The American track star shares his sprinting journey, Paris 2024 Olympics hopes, and what it's like being compared to his brother Noah: "I am not competing to prove myself, just focussing on running fast."
What do American brothers Josephus and Noah Lyles have in common, besides being among the world’s fastest men over the 200m?
The Lyles siblings are go-getters, united by the unwavering belief that they will be the ‘best in the world’.
Josephus is aware of the constant comparison with his older brother, Noah, a three-time world champion in track athletics. He has often felt overshadowed by the Tokyo Olympics 200m bronze medallist.
Until he realised the damage it was doing to his motivation.
“I remember for the 2019 World Championships in Doha, I didn’t go…[and] me not going to those championships really flipped a switch in my brain. I started to feel like I didn’t need to compare myself to other people.
“At that point, I was comparing myself to [Noah] and thinking, OK, well he’s achieved all of this. I train just as hard as him, we do similar things, but I feel like I’m not achieving that,” he said in a recent interview with NBC Sports.
Josephus had a breakout past year. He finally made his first senior World Championships in Eugene and is hopeful he can make the cut for the Budapest edition in August 2023. One of the many to-dos on his list that he hopes can fuel his next year.
“In 2021, I didn’t make the team, but that wasn’t for me at that time, he continued to NBC Sports.
"But a dream delayed is not denied. When I try out for the team in 2024, I know I’m going to be prepared. So making that team is going to mean the world to me.” Josephus Lyles to NBC.
Josephus Lyles: How Noah helped cultivate a passion for sprints
Josephus has always looked up to Noah, who is older than him by 369 days.
When the younger Lyles brother began in athletics, he would double as a 400m/800m runner.
The one-lap was bearable, but he hated the 800m.
He quit track, not convinced he would follow in Noah or his parent’s footsteps. His mother, Keisha Caine Bishop, is a former NCAA 4x400m relay champion, while his father, Kevin Lyles, helped the U.S. to gold in the 4x400m at the 1993 Summer Universiade.
On his return to track while studying at T.C. Williams in Alexandria (now Alexandria City High School), the younger Lyles focused on the sprints.
“My mom always says that when we were younger kids in school, I would always excel at school. I was very intelligent and picked up on traditional learning very well, and I was very athletic as well, so it wasn’t hard for me to succeed there. Noah had a much harder time with traditional learning. He struggled with learning disabilities, so it was very hard for him,” Josephus recalled of his brother’s battles with dyslexia and depression as a teenager.
At 19, Noah just missed making the U.S. Olympics team to the Rio 2016 Olympics. He was already 2014 Youth Olympic Games champion, and his younger brother had won a 2014 World Junior relay gold medal. Bonded further by their super sprinting genes, the Florida-born pair decided to bypass college and turn pro.
“We’d been debating it, and we agreed early on, it’s either both of us go pro or we both go to college. We’re not going to split,” Josephus said in an interview with the Washington Post of a decision they made while watching the London 2012 Olympics.
“So this was a joint decision. It’s pretty amazing to have someone who’s always going to have your back, who you can always count on it. It makes it that much more meaningful that we could do this together.”
Josephus Lyles on the stress of being compared to big bro Noah
Like any athlete, Josephus knows the heartache of being side-lined from track with injury. In 2014, he was on crutches with a twisted ankle, and two years later, when his brother just missed making the USA Olympic team, he sat out the Trials with a torn-right hip flexor.
“When you’re trying to be the best, you’re always trying to push your body. You’re running along the thin line of not training hard enough versus getting hurt,” Josephus recalled of the tough period.
“Sometimes it can get a little hard. If one of us is doing well and the other one is not doing well, it can be rough,” Josephus told NBC before they competed at the same pro race for the first time at the Diamond League in Monaco in 2020.
At almost identical ages, training under the same coach, Lance Brauman in Florida, Noah’s career was peaking, and he seemed more of a well-rounded sprinter. Josephus, on the other hand, had a lingering hip injury and chest problems weighing him down. He was resolute on making the 2019 Worlds, but failed to progress from the semi-finals at the 2019 U.S. Trials, where his brother won the 200m, qualifying for Doha.
Noah went on to claim gold in the distance at the worlds.
Josephus began struggling with feelings of self-doubt.
“When I first entered the pro scene, I was really just expecting myself to go and automatically be the best. The idea that I had for my journey didn’t unfold that way,” he said.
“I struggled my first few years as a pro with not being the best in the world and really having to be OK with climbing the ladder. I’m glad that it did happen because it taught me so many things in terms of who I am as a person, how I deal with adversity and giving me a lot of faith. I know that whatever knocks me down, I can get back up. I can come back from that.”
He felt privileged to be training with the newly crowned world champion, but the contrasting turns in their careers had him questioning his abilities. The double World Youth medallist managed to face down his own self-doubts.
"At one point, I felt like I deserved to be there [World Championships in Doha] because I’ve put in all the work. I had to switch my mentality to ‘I don’t deserve anything’. There’s so many people who put in so much time and effort and don’t get far in their field of work.
“I switched my mindset to focusing on doing what I can do and being very happy for my brother and my training partners. I’ve always been happy for them. Once I started thinking like that, it was a weight off my shoulders.”
“I wasn’t competing to prove myself. I was just competing to be the best that I can be. I didn’t need to show the world that I can run fast. I just decided to focus on running fast because I enjoy doing it.” - Josephus Lyles to NBC Sports.
Josephus Lyles on career-defining moment
Armed with self-awareness, Josephus focussed on making his first World Championships. A fifth spot at the U.S. Trials in the 200m, won by his brother, meant he’d missed the three top automatic spots. He figured he could only make the team as an alternate despite racing to a PB of 19.93.
The top four men from the 100m dash usually form the U.S. 4X100m relay team. But the selectors opted to pick Josephus instead of the fourth-place finisher for their home World Championships.
And it was Noah who had the honour of informing his sibling that he had made the team.
“I went to team processing for being an alternate… so I fill it out and I leave. I go to eat because I’m starving, and my brother calls me and tells me, ‘You need to come to team processing’.
"I said, ‘I already did that for the alternates.’ And he said, ‘No, they want you for the relay pool.’ And I was like, ‘Are you lying?! You’re not playing with me right?’…it just didn’t feel real,” the 24-year-old said, looking back at the career-defining moment.
“It didn’t feel real because going into the championships, I really felt like I was going to make the team…when I ended up getting fifth at the trials, I was so devastated. When I got that call, I was like, wow, this is not the way I thought I was going to be on the team, but I’m here.”
Josephus Lyles on Paris 2024 dream: ‘Making the team will mean the world to me’.
Now a solid 200m runner, training and racing together with Noah has bonded them even further. The younger Lyles is happy to have him close, inspiring and pushing him to succeed.
"Noah is very good at listening to what he needs and making it happen,” Josephus told NBC.
“When I watch other athletes and when I watch him, one thing that he does differently that is very important is he makes sure that whatever he needs, he’s going to get. A lot of athletes will need something and won’t ask for it thinking it’s not a reasonable request but that does not matter to Noah. He’s like, ‘This is what I need to do well. I’m going to get it’.
“Seeing that is inspiring and has definitely allowed me to have the same mentality and respect myself enough to say this is what I need. It’s a level that you hold yourself and the others around you to. In this journey, it’s not just one person. It’s a lot of people coming together to make that dream a reality."
Like Noah who has a ‘huge fire’ in his belly for Paris 2024, Josephus harbours an Olympic dream. What would qualifying for Paris mean to him?
“This has been a dream for me for years now. In 2016, I qualified for the Olympic Trials, and I tore my quad and was devastated. In 2021, I didn’t make the team. But a dream delayed is not denied. When I try out for the team in 2024, I know I’m going to be prepared. So making that team is going to mean the world to me. I don’t know if I’m going to cry, but in my head, I know I probably will.”