Noah Lyles is already a headline act on Netflix, can lift twice his body weight and hangs out with Snoop Dogg… now the 100m king can be as BIG as Usain Bolt

No sooner had Noah Lyles landed his first Olympic gold medal, than he was announcing his next big goal. ‘I want my own sneaker,’ said the new 100 metres champion. ‘Even Michael Johnson didn’t have his own sneaker.’

One man who did, though, was Usain Bolt – and that is who Lyles is coming closer to emulating with every race he runs and wins.

The 27-year-old American does not actually like being compared to the 100m and 200m world record holder. ‘I am a very big believer in everybody being their own person,’ he told Mail Sport in Monaco in December. ‘Comparing somebody to somebody else is the lazy man’s understanding.’

But make no mistake, Lyles is the best thing to happen to athletics since Bolt exited the stage in 2017. And now the world champion is also the Olympic champion, he can go on to transcend track and field just like the Jamaican legend.

‘If I’m wearing a promoter’s hat, then Noah winning last night was important,’ admitted World Athletics president Lord Coe, the morning after the greatest Olympic 100m final in history. ‘He’s now creating a narrative that is heading us back into Usain Bolt territory and that is hugely important.

Lyles (Lane 7) beat Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson (Lane 4) by just five thousandths of a second

A photograph of Lyles celebrating his gold medal triumph is projected near the Eiffel Tower

Lyles is the best thing to happen to athletics since Usain Bolt exited the stage back in 2017

‘It’s a face that has now got young people talking about athletics. Friends of mine who’ve got young kids, they’re now talking about Noah Lyles in the same breath as some of the highest profile sportsmen and women in the world. He is beginning to transcend the sport.’

You only needed to see how he was mobbed by young British fans at the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, London last month – before he won the Diamond League meeting – to know this to be true.

Lyles is the headline act on the Netflix documentary Sprint, which was released last month and became the sixth most watched show on the streaming platform worldwide, charting in the top 10 in 50 different countries.

He appeared on the front cover of Time Magazine and was a guest on The Tonight Show. Lyles even entered the stadium for June’s US Olympic trials alongside Snoop Dogg, who was at the Stade de France to watch his crowning moment on Sunday night. Lyles later challenged the hip hop legend to a race.

Lyles is the ultimate showman. Just look at the way he ran out of the tunnel before his name was called ahead of the 100m final, tearing down the track and whipping the crowd into a frenzy, while his rivals stood nervously by their blocks.

But this is not just off-the-cuff stuff. Every move Lyles makes – from painting his nails in the US colours or holding up his paper bib bearing his name in celebration – is calculated. Take also how he released a new video, entitled ‘The making of an icon’, on his YouTube channel on the morning of the 100m first round.

‘It was just capitalising on the moment,’ Lyles explained. ‘I knew that I was going to be running and there was going to be eyeballs on me and people googling it.

‘Google has connections to YouTube, it pushes everybody to my YouTube channel. What better than having a new video going out as soon as I am running?

Lyles is the ultimate showman and entered the stadium for June’s US Olympic trials alongside Snoop Dogg (pictured)

Lyles after claiming gold medal wasted no time in saying his next goal is to have his own sneaker

Lyles is the ultimate showman and everything he does from painting his nails in the US colours or holding up his paper bib bearing his name in celebration is calculated

‘As much as I am a track and field athlete, I’m just as much a marketer. I see myself as a big brand.’

Lyles also knows, though, that his brand would be worthless if he was not winning, which is why he does not let his promotional push distract from his day job.

Behind the scenes, he has been honing his body and mind for three years in preparation for the Paris Olympics, ever since he came away from Tokyo 2020 with just a 200m bronze medal, something he pulled out at his press conference on Sunday night.

Lyles has one of the biggest teams behind him in the sport, including his mother, who he calls his ‘momager’, a race manager, agent, coach, doctor, physio, chiropractor, biomechanics specialist, masseuse, nutritionist, chef, stylist, sports therapist and regular therapist.

Lyles called the first of those therapists after Sunday’s semi-final, when he was only the third fastest qualifier into the final. The advice he received back? ‘Let go, relax and be yourself.’

His other therapist has helped him deal with the mental health challenges which have plagued him since he was bullied as a schoolboy. ‘I have asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety, and depression,’ Lyles wrote on X on Sunday night. ‘But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become.’

As for what fuels his body, Lyles has 10 meals a week cooked for him by his own chef, Ronald Fields. They are low fat, low carb, full of green vegetables and lean meats, favouring chicken and turkey over beef and fish. ‘You have to come in performing at your top level, just like they do,’ said Fields about his own role as part of Team Lyles.

The US star’s physio is Kiwi Jo Brown, who also works at the Australian Open, where she has tended to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. She regularly flies to his training base in Florida from Down Under to do glute and calf activation drills with him.

Lyles spends four days a week in the weights room focusing on workouts to build his power

Lyles spends four days a week in the weights room, focusing on workouts which build power. His exercises include squats, power throws and single-leg Romanian deadlifts. His personal best for a power clean is 130kg, impressive for a man who weighs just 70kg and is only 5ft 11in tall – far shorter than the 6ft 5in Bolt.

As well as regular massages, Lyles looks after himself by using a hot tub and leg-compressive sleeves, which are designed to provide targeted support to the calf muscles. ‘If I don’t work on each individual piece to the fullest ability, I leave variables out and I want constants,’ he said.

When it comes to racing, Lyles has always been a strong finisher but has often struggled with his start. To work on his reaction time, he called in the expertise of Ralph Mann, the 75-year-old former US 400m hurdler, who won an Olympic silver medal in 1972.

Mann has a PhD in biomechanics and has written a 300-page textbook on the mechanics of sprinting, having collected data on more than 500 athletes. He has created his own software that generates a stickman to highlight where a sprinter’s limbs should be as they leave the blocks.

Thanks to the help of Mann, Lyles’ start did improve significantly over the winter, demonstrated by a new personal best of 6.43sec over 60m. On Sunday night, however, he got the joint-slowest start of all eight 100m finalists, yet still managed to come through and win with a PB of 9.79sec – beating Kishane Thompson by just 0.005sec.

Lyles’ strong finish to the race helped him see off Thompson (left) to claim the gold medal

‘Ralph Mann, before I left for Paris, said this is how close first and second is going to be away from each other,’ said Lyles, holding his hand up with a narrow space between his index finger and thumb. ‘I can’t believe how right he was.’

Lyles will be back in action on Tuesday night in the 200m heats. Ahead of the final of that event on Thursday, where he is fully expected to win his second gold medal. ‘I hope you guys like Noah,’ he added. ‘Because I’ve got a lot more coming.’