Noah Lyles ahead of the World Athletics Relays: “It’s only getting faster from here”

Noah Lyles’ mission for quadruple Olympic gold

Lyles is returning to his 100m roots in the Bahamas after his 4x400m international debut at the 2024 Indoor World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, where the Americans succumbed to the Belgians by 0.06 seconds to take second place.

If he is to secure four gold at Paris 2024, he will need to navigate a challenging combination of the 4x100m and 4x400m relays, plus the 100m and 200m sprints.

One Games, four events, four golds: that’s the goal for Lyles in Paris. It’s a feat that no track star, not even legendary Jamaican track star Usain Bolt, has achieved.

Nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis and four-time champion Jesse Owens are the only two men to claim four athletics golds at a single Games, but both of their tallies included a long jump title, as opposed to Lyles’ attempt at four sprint events.

“A lot of people thought I was just doing it for the headlines,” Lyles told Reuters in a March 2024 interview after his first attempt at the 4x400m relay.

“I just ran the 4x400m in Glasgow (Indoor World Championships), and I felt that was definitely one of my ways of saying that this isn’t a joke.”

The 26-year-old was the fastest of all six team’s third legs in Glasgow, but had the second-slowest time of the American runners with a 45.68 to Christopher Bailey’s 45.32, Jacory Patterson’s 45.97 and Matthew Boling’ s 45.63.