“I try to be a showman- some people criticize me for it, some people love it…” Noah Lyles openly embraces his larger-than-life personality. His NBA comment had sent tremors through the basketball community and he did get a lot of flak for it too. But, the athlete hardly ever has a mincing way with his words. On track, his confidence exudes through his performances, and off track, he fires off his thoughts boldly.

Even in Paris, an assertive Lyles had mentioned before the 200m race that none of his competitors were winning. In fact, he boasted, “When I [Noah] come off the turn, they will be depressed.” Lyles came in third in that race, and was diagnosed with COVID, but did his confidence dip? Well, not so much. The 100m Olympic champion recently admitted his nature while drawing a comparison with his compatriot, Fred Kerley.

Noah Lyles comments on his open nature

Sitting down with Ben Gallaga in the Everybody Wants to Be Us podcast, Noah Lyles answers why he is so open and in touch with his emotions, compared to his competitors. To this Lyles replies that he will not say that because he doesn’t know them. Nonetheless, he remarked, “I will say that they are not open to sharing.” He pinpointed that Lyles had touched on this in the Netflix series SPRINT. He said, “When I was talking about Fred. I was just like, I’m a very open guy. He’s not that open.” He continues to add, “You know, we’re different. There’s nothing bad. It’s just how it is.”

Noah Lyles even mentions that in sports in general, it’s not easy to hear things about oneself. Citing his own example, he says, “You can look at my career and all those things that you just lifted off, people sharing that I’m arrogant, that I’m full of myself, that I’m c*cky, that I’m a narcissist. Not everybody can handle hearing those things.” So at times, it is actually easier to let people perceive the athletes in their thoughts and just label them as “he’s a quiet guy.” Because the world cannot harp on a quiet person. But as for Lyles, who is “available to letting everybody have their own opinions of how, who I am and be able to throw rocks and sticks and spears, but still be able to take it,” it’s a lot more difficult.

Well, related to these two athletes, Kerley recently seemed to have made a dig at Lyles. When the latter mentioned on the Nightcap podcast that he wants his own shoe, a sneaker, Kerley added a tweet saying, he already did that. The 100m Olympic bronze medalist from Paris wrote, “People talking about making sneakers in track I already did that.” 

Regardless, Noah Lyles recalls his mother, Keisha Caine, advising him as he commented on his open nature. It was something she had told Noah Lyles in high school. And it resonates with the 26-year-old to date.

Lyles remembers his mother’s golden advice to him

Everything that Lyles does on social media, or in the public eye, seems to come at the cost of some people staying stuff about him. But Noah Lyles’, mother, Keisha Caine, had prepared him for this very day. In the same podcast, he confessed, “Very early on when I was in high school, my mom would say, the higher you go in the social ladder, the more your underwear shows.”

Today, the Florida native, Noah Lyles, who won the 100m by a photo finish, agrees that his mother is ‘so right.’ He believes the higher one goes, the more people come in with opinions and the more people are going to speak their minds. Why so? He opines, “because at that point there’s a, there’s a certain sphere where they don’t see you as normal people of society anymore.” Instead, people see them as athletes who are up there and they’re down, so “they’re gonna say whatever they want.”

And Noah Lyles seems to have adapted this formula. What do you think of his outlook? Let us know below.