Noah Lyles had a lot of expectations riding on his shoulders before the Paris Olympics. Many thought he’d sweep the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m like he did at the ’23 Worlds. By that time, his exploits on track and personality off track had also made him the face of the sport.

Thus, when Netflix made their track and field documentary Sprint, they concentrated a lot of their screen time on Noah Lyles. This is possibly because they believed he was a guarantee on podiums. However, while this was largely entertaining for the viewers, Noah’s coach wasn’t quite a big fan of cameras following him around everywhere. He believed that it might affect his training sessions.

Noah Lyles’ coach worried the Netflix doc might be a distraction

In the Sprint documentary season 2 episode 1, Lance Brauman, Noah Lyles’ coach, opened up about the difficulties of training with so many cameras around because of the filming of the documentary. During one of the training sessions, he was asked if his pre-Olympic training was typical, and Lance admitted it wasn’t. He said, “No, I mean it’s normal training as well as it can be with all these people here.” Lance added that, as Noah Lyles is such a huge athlete, the stakes are really high for him. This is why he gets worried about the distractions he might face. “I mean, you obviously worry about any outside distractions that are going to affect training. You know, sometimes it pulls at him in a few different directions, and part of my job is to help pull him back,” said Lance.

The coach also emphasized that despite the media attention, Noah’s primary focus remains on achieving results, specifically qualifying for the Paris Olympics. “Nobody knows your name, and you’re not successful if you don’t run fast first. The actual performance is the most important part of this,” he said.

Thus, both Lance and Noah were geared up for the Olympic trials. Eventually, Noah would make it to the Paris team in spectacular fashion, winning the 100-meter race in the trials with a time of 9.83 seconds. He would then qualify for the 200-meter race with a time of 19.53 seconds. This made most of Lance’s misgivings with Sprint filming Noah Lyles shatter. In fact, the show should instead be credited for increasing Noah’s popularity even more.

Noah Lyles on his increase in followers since the release of Sprint

While Noah Lyles’ coach may have had a problem with the ‘Sprint’ team following him throughout his training, it’s clear that the athlete benefited from the first season of the Netflix documentary. This was because it made him visible to a larger audience. In fact, according to a conversation with Gabby Thomas, the US athlete has gained quite a lot of followers.

During the second episode of season 2, both the US athletes were recuperating from practice with a sports massage. Both of them occupied most of the screen time of the show because they were favorites to win medals in their categories. Thus, Noah asked Gabby, How many followers on Instagram did she gain after the first season of the show came out? “Oh, a lot, yeah. I’ve gained a lot of followers. It’s been crazy,” said Gabby.

Noah then told her the magnificent number of followers he had gained since the streaming of the show, saying that the figure lies around 5k-10k a day. This is an astonishing figure, which makes it seem that more and more new people are discovering the athlete every day. It also asserts that Noah Lyles is indeed the face of track and field today.