Congratulations are in order for Noah Lyles and his girlfriend, Junelle.
Track and field Olympian Noah Lyles is an engaged man.
During Lyles’ whirlwind 2024 Paris Olympics, his girlfriend, Junelle Bromfield, was by his side as he ran his way to a gold medal and became the fastest man in the world. At the time, Lyles said, “I got pretty big plans for a celebration,” which might have meant spending the rest of their lives together.
Lyles and Bromfield shared videos on their social media Sunday of heir recent engagement, Bromfield’s gorgeous ring and huge smiles of joy. There were also a lot of flowers, candles, and even mini-fireworks to make the occasion. Congratulations to the happy couple!
Tyreek Hill is already moving the goal posts with Noah Lyles.
One of the lingering stories from the Paris Olympics has been the “feud” between Miami Dolphins star receiver Tyreek Hill and 100-meter men’s gold medalist Noah Lyles.
On Sunday morning, Hill circled back to some recent comments from Lyles challenging the receiver to a race as long as he’s “serious” about it and not just talking trash on the internet.
There’s one important caveat.
Hill set the parameters at 50 yards, not 100 meters, as everyone had initially assumed (and as Hill himself had maintained) while following this back-and-forth. Why, it’s almost as if he’ll only race Lyles under conditions he’s comfortable in — a 50-yard sprint would clearly favor/help a short distance-oriented professional football player:
"If he's serious about it, not just talking on the internet … if you're serious about it, you'll see me on track"
I can’t lie. Hill coming back at Lyles while saying he’d race him for 50 yards is pretty weak. If he thinks he’s faster than the world-class sprinter, he’d race him at any distance, but especially 100 yards. Hill suggesting 50 yards is him leaning on his wheelhouse — the Dolphins’ speedster is known for turning on the jets in 50-yard bursts past helpless cornerbacks. And if he were to lose in 50 yards to Lyles, he could probably make the outcome look a lot closer than it should be.
But all of this was never the implicit discussion anyway. It just makes Hill look fearful of losing to Lyles.
Naturally, fans on Twitter called out Hill for suggesting a 50-yard race with Lyles.
Noah Lyles continues his tour of becoming the most hated man in sports. He’s collecting enemies from across leagues like Thanos collected the Infinity Stones. It’s crazy.
Today’s new enemy is Tyreek Hill, who foolishly claimed he could beat Lyles in a race after the gold medalist said that Super Bowl winners are technically not “world champions.”
Hill was very clearly annoyed by that. He said Lyles should “speak on what you know and that’s track.”
“What’s the cheetah guy from football? I can’t remember his name,” Lyles said. He even asked a friend who the “guy who thinks he’s fast” from football is before being reminded that it’s, indeed, Tyreek Hill.
Obviously, Lyles is being facetious here. He knows Hill well enough to know about his Cheetah nickname. He’s obviously just poking at him again here, which is what Lyles has become surprisingly good at.
Tyreek Hill says Noah Lyles pretended to be sick at the Olympics and he says he’d beat the gold medalist in a race.
Evidently, Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill wasn’t too impressed with Noah Lyles’ gold-medal winning showing at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
While he posted his congratulations to Lyles after the track star won in the 100 meters, Hill didn’t think much of the runner’s third place finish in the 200 meters which was followed by the reveal of a COVID diagnosis.
“Noah Lyles can’t say nothing after what happened to him,” Hill told Kay Adams of Up & Adams. “Then he wants to come out and pretend like he’s sick. I feel like that’s like horseradish. For him to do that and say that we’re not world champions of our sport — come on, bruh, just speak on what you know about and that’s track.”
Then Hill upped the ante.
“I would beat Noah Lyles [in a race],” Hill told Adams. “I would beat Noah Lyles. I wouldn’t beat him by a lot, but I’d beat Noah Lyles. And guess what, when I beat him, I’ll put on a COVID mask and let him know I mean business.”
Does Hill really believe he’d beat Lyles — the newly anointed “fastest man on the planet” — in a race? Probably not. Stirring the pot is Hill’s specialty and his best ever time in the 100 meters wouldn’t be enough to earn a spot in the Olympic final, let alone keep up with Lyles’ gold-medal winning 9.79-second run.
That didn’t stop Hill from fueling the fire Monday afternoon, though.
Tyreek Hill is probably the fastest player in the NFL. That’s undeniable. But when it comes to Olympic sprinters, nobody is scared of Hill’s speed — especially not Noah Lyles.
That’s what made Hill’s comments on Monday extra strange when discussing the Olympic gold medalist’s criticism of American sports leagues calling themselves “world champions.”
In an interview with Kay Adams, Hill was asked for his response to Lyles — who left Paris with a gold medal in the men’s 100m and a bronze medal in the men’s 200m. In his response, though, it became clear that Hill forgot that Lyles won gold in the Olympics’ marquee event and went on to claim that he would beat Lyles in a race.
6x All Pro and SB Champ Tyreek Hill responds to Noah Lyles comments about Super Bowl winners not being "World Champs"…
“Noah Lyles can’t say nothing after what just happened to him. … For him to do that and say we’re not world champions of our sport. Like, come on, bruh. Just speak on what you know about and that’s track.”
Hill then said that he would beat Lyles in a race.
Again, Lyles absolutely can say something as the Olympic champion in the 100m. It seemed like Hill was focused on what happened in the 200m, but the event that Lyles won gold in earned him the title as world’s fastest man.
Plus, if you’re looking at the numbers, Lyles’ time in Paris has Hill’s best 100m time beat by nearly half a second. Lyles even bested Hill’s wind-aided time of 9.98.
It’s a race that Hill doesn’t want to actually happen.
Both gold medalists have signed endorsement deals with the shoe company adidas. Recent reporting suggests that there is potentially animosity between the two, but Lyles is attempting to squash those growing rumors.
Noah Lyles wanted his respect after being invited to an Anthony Edwards event
Included in a recent feature about Lyles is an anecdote about why the sprinter did not attend a shoe-release event for Edwards. Here is more (via TIME):
When Lyles was negotiating an Adidas contract extension last year, the company, he says, threw him what it thought was a bone. Adidas invited him to the shoe-release event for Anthony Edwards, the rising Minnesota Timberwolves star who’s got plenty of talent but, unlike Lyles, isn’t a six-time world champ. “You want to do what?” says Lyles. “You want to invite me to [an event for] a man who has not even been to an NBA Finals? In a sport that you don’t even care about? And you’re giving him a shoe? No disrespect: the man is an amazing athlete. He is having a heck of a year. I love that they saw the insight to give him a shoe, because they saw that he was going to be big. All I’m asking is, ‘How could you not see that for me?’”
His reported comments about Edwards’ signature shoe would add further fuel to that fire, especially because the Timberwolves guard is one of the faces of the brand.
There is a rumor going around that I did not go to @theantedwards_ shoe release because he didn’t deserve it. That is not the case he definitely deserves his shoes he is an amazing player. The problem was finding time based on my prior engagements. Congratulations on Becoming an…
But he is creating some distance between himself and the comments that he allegedly made to TIME. He is now suggesting that he could not attend the event based on scheduling conflicts.
He added that Edwards is an “amazing player” and congratulated the former No. 1 overall pick on also becoming a champion at the Olympics.
Here’s why Noah Lyles was out for the men’s 4×100 relay at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
If you’re wondering why Noah Lyles — who won the Paris Olympics men’s 100m race by a photo finish — wasn’t on the 4×100 men’s relay team on Friday, there’s a good reason why.
— United States: 103 (30 gold, 38 silver, 35 bronze)
— China: 74 (30 gold, 25 silver, 19 bronze)
— France: 55 (14 gold, 19 silver, 22 bronze)
— Great Britain: 52 (14 gold, 17 silver, 21 bronze)
— Australia: 46 (18 gold, 14 silver, 14 bronze)
Let’s jump in.
Noah Lyles’ story just got flipped
On Thursday my phone rang. It was my mom. She calls me every day to check on me, because that’s what moms do. But yesterday, she had a bit of panic in her voice.
So when she saw him collapse to the ground after running the race he was supposedly the favorite to win, she was concerned.
“I’ve never seen him drop like that,” she said to me. I tried to assure her he was probably fine and just tired. She wouldn’t hear it. “As a mom, you know when something’s wrong,” she said.
She was right. Something was terribly wrong. Shortly after that, we found out Lyles had COVID-19.
That’s all it took to silence the loudest man at the Olympics this summer. Noah Lyles had been telling us all summer how great he was. He let us know that he was going to make history at these Games in so many ways. And, to his credit, he did that with his first historic 100-meter sprint.
But the job wasn’t finished. He wanted that 200-meter medal, too. The 100 was great. But both the 100 and 200? That would’ve been undeniable. He would’ve been the 10th man ever to win both and the first since Usain Bolt in 2016. Nothing was going to stop him.
That is until COVID-19 came into the picture. The virus had Lyles singing a different tune.
“It’s taken its toll, for sure. But I’ve never been more proud of myself for being able to come out here and get a bronze medal,” Lyles said. “Last Olympics I was disappointed in it. This time I couldn’t be more proud.”
Don’t get me wrong — that’s reasonable. Winning a bronze medal with COVID is insane. It makes you wonder what was possible. Could he have beaten Lestlie Tebogo, whose 19.45 time was better than any time in the 200m Lyles posted this year? We’ll never know.
But what I do know is that, regularly, Lyles wouldn’t have been satisfied with bronze. Just a week ago, if you’d told him that’s what he’d run, he’d be extremely disappointed in it. The circumstances changed, obviously.
That’s the power of that virus. It may not be 2020 anymore, but it’s still scary.
The scariest part is that Lyles isn’t the only one with it — another 40 athletes at the Games reportedly have COVID. Cases around the country have also been spiking all summer long. Thankfully, the death toll isn’t what it once was. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take this seriously.
Unfortunately, however, that’s how everyone seems to be treating it. As impressive as his race was, the fact that Lyles was still allowed to run it is a bit baffling to me.
But we’re no longer treating this virus the serious matter it once was. Technically, the Paris Olympics have no COVID protocol. It feels like the CDC treats quarantining like a suggestion if you do have it. At this point, we might as well be talking about the common cold or the flu here.
Make no mistake, folks. COVID-19 hasn’t gone anywhere. It still lingers and it still damages people. If it got bad enough to bring an Olympic medalist to the ground, then imagine what it could do to at-risk folks elsewhere.
Noah Lyles’ hero story is now a cautionary tale. Be wary. Stay healthy.
Our final taste of Paris
Michell Martinelli is checking in with her final TMW dispatch from Paris. What a sweet ride it’s been. This time, she gives us perspective on the Seine River and open-water racing.
And let’s just say it clearly takes a really special kind of swimmer to not just train and qualify for the event but also finish it. (The triathletes did it too.)
The women’s 10k was Thursday, and the men’s was Friday. There are 80 million reasons why these swimmers in particular are tougher and stronger than the rest of us, but here are a few …
Second, as the swimmers said afterward, the current was super powerful and unlike anything many of them had experienced before, typically swimming in lakes and oceans rather than the narrow metropolitan waterway.
Fellow American Ivan Puskovitch said the current was particularly bad on the turns of the 1.67-kilometer loop “when you just have this wall of water coming at you from the side.” Though, he was in much higher spirits post-race than many.
Also, when several of those who finished — four of 29 in the men’s final didn’t — finally climbed out, they looked beyond exhausted, even dejected. “It’s the worst and best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Irish swimmer Daniel Wiffen, who thought about quitting midway through but was happy he didn’t.
With the Closing Ceremony set for Sunday, this is my last dispatch from the Paris Olympics. So thanks for reading, and au revoir!
Avengers, assemble!
(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
I know I’ve been making a lot of Captain America and Avengers references throughout these Olympics, but I can find no other way to describe what we watched from Team USA against Serbia on Thursday.
Honestly, I’m unsure if the states have ever been more united than they were at that moment.
At the end of the third quarter, the U.S. was down by as many as 15 points. That is, until Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant decided that the game wouldn’t end like that.
I couldn’t really think in the moment while watching it. I just kept repeating, “This means something to me, man” over and over again in my mind.
Curry, specifically, put his cape on with 36 points and nine made 3-pointers. It was a true vintage performance from the greatest shooter of all time.
The basketball was incredible. But what was even more unbelievable was all of their unreasonable and irrational fans finally coming together and cheering for all three of them at the same time.
This tweet sums it up perfectly.
Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and LeBron James. The three greatest players of this era, just saved Team USA from an absolute disaster.
That was one of my favorite basketball moments in my lifetime.
“I believe this will be the end of my 2024 Olympics,” Lyles wrote in the message. “It is not the Olympic I dreamed of but it has left me with so much Joy in my heart. I hope everyone enjoyed the show.”
Lyles took the gold in the 100 meter relay for Team USA before taking the bronze in the 200m on Thursday.
The gold medal winner was brutally honest about why he won’t become the face of the sport
Botswana’s Letsile Tobogo had his moment during the men’s 200-meter final at the Paris Olympics on Thursday. The athlete cruised to the gold medal with a time of 19.46, outpacing Team USA’s Kenny Bednarek (silver) and Noah Lyles (bronze), who was notably battling a case of COVID-19.
After the event, Tebogo took questions from the media. He was appropriately asked if he had any ambitions about being one of the faces of sprinting worldwide. In a very matter-of-fact fashion — I’m talking with a completely straight face — Tebogo said he probably couldn’t be one of the faces because he’s not as “loud or arrogant” as Lyles.
Kudos to Tebogo for saying something like this after actually beating Lyles, though. That man is almost certainly on top of the world for beating one of his top rivals. He’s earned the right to pontificate as he pleases.
And the irony of it? Even if he might not have meant for it to sound like trash talk, talking about Lyles like this in public is precisely what could make Tebogo one of the faces of sports.
(@kxnaomi) 
Noah Lyles doesn’t seem to know who Tyreek Hill is 
