Noah Lyles vs Michael Johnson and Usain Bolt? The new double sprint world champion's ideal 200m race
The U.S. star made the revelation of his ideal 200m race a day after winning his third consecutive world title in Budapest.
Athletics
If the new 100m and 200m double sprint world champion Noah Lyles could race any previous champion from those distances on the track, who would they would be?
Without hestitating, Lyles has an answer, and "easily": eight-time Olympic and 11-time world champion Usain Bolt, and the four-time Olympic and eight-time world champion Michael Johnson, who both claimed Olympic titles in the 200m.
Bolt is the current world record holder over that distance, while Johnson held the USA national record from Atlanta 1996 until last year, when Lyles broke it at the 2022 World Championships.
So why those two? Because Lyles sees himself in them, in how they approached racing.
"Their mental (ability)," Lyles explained on Saturday (26 August), a day after winning a third straight 200m world title with his triumph at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
"It's very rare I get to race people who have the same mentality as me to such a high degree. Both of them are two people whose mental were so strong.
"They understood what it took to be a champion. Not only did they do that, they performed on the day of. It is one thing to get your body ready the whole year, it is a whole other thing to do it the day that it matters."
Noah Lyles's "most important" medal: Tokyo 2020 bronze
Ahead of Paris 2024, Lyles also revealed that despite now owning five world titles, and possibly six after the 2023 Championships, the medal he considers most important to him is the bronze he took home from his debut Olympic Games, Tokyo 2020.
"I've had those moments where this was a really rough race. I keep some of my second place trophies, my third place trophies, even a sixth place, because they mean something to me. I remember when I ran in my first sub-10 (100m race) legally, I got second to Zharnel (Hughes) that day. I kept that medal because it was a big moment for my career.
"And of course I have my bronze medal from the Olympics and it's probably going to be the most important.
"Because when I'm able to look at all my gold Olympic medals, I'm going to go back to my first (medal) and be like, 'you were the reason that I fought so hard for all of these guys'."
Paris 2024: Noah Lyles wants to "run it back"
After admitting that he needed to change his routine in future to "push really hard to get as much sleep as possible" when at future Championships, Lyles said there was only one thing in his mind for next year's Paris 2024 Games.
"Run it back, same thing," he said. "Three golds (100m, 200m, 4x100m), and maybe a few more records. Medals is what counts.
"This was a precursor to Paris. This is how we want to go in. We wanna come in (as the) double champ, wanna to leave, double champ. And we wanna tell the world, 'you're looking at everybody else, but we're the guy you wanna look at.'"