When the Olympic Games are finally held this month, NoVA natives might recognize a familiar face: sprinter Noah Lyles, who set national records as a teenager in Alexandria and has made this year’s U.S. national team. Lyles and his younger brother, Josephus, also a runner, went pro just weeks after graduating from T.C. Williams High School in 2016. The Olympics have been the goal since they were freshmen there. “In 2012, me and my brother were at a Junior Olympics USA Track & Field meet and we had the idea, We’re going to make the Olympic team,” said Noah Lyles at a press conference this spring. “We were like, We’re going to make it for 2016.”
Lyles ended up falling short of that goal by just 0.09 seconds, but wasn’t deterred. “You don’t make one of ’em, you go for the next. Even if you did make it, you’d have gone for the next.” Lyles, who turns 24 this month, has in the past credited much of his success to his days at T.C. Williams. “Most of the things I do today are because of what I learned in high school,” he told Northern Virginia magazine in 2019. “We learned how to visualize, how to prepare days in advance for track meets, how to travel, and how to be on time.” Time hasn’t been a problem for Lyles, who sped to victory at the USATF Golden Games in May. Next stop: Tokyo.
Feature image courtesy USATF
This story originally ran in our July issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.
