Be Like Biles, Not Like Lyles
Health and responsibility at the Olympic Games
If there’s one good thing that has come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the message that if you are sick, you should not “power through”, but instead stay home and away from other people if it all possible. Unfortunately, that important advice appears to have been lost on a particular arrogant athlete at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
U.S. American sprinter Noah Lyles is considered to be the fastest man on Earth. He knows this, and he wants to make sure everyone else does, too. He came into this year’s Olympic Games announcing that he was going to win both the 100 and 200 meter events. Not hoped to win, but would win.
Of course, winning a competition is the ultimate goal of every elite athlete, but Lyles stated his gold medal aspirations as if these victories were foregone conclusions. He had been anointed by the media as the successor to world record holder Usain Bolt, and he was lapping this right up.
At the 100m Olympic final on August 4, the race came down to a photo finish between Lyles and Jamaican sprinter Kishane Thompson. When Lyles was announced as the winner by .005 seconds, he ripped off his race bib and held it aloft, beckoned to the camera and shouted “I told you! I. Got. This!” In an interview shortly afterward, he said that…
