Team USA track and field star Noah Lyles admits he’s still adjusting to being one of the faces of this year’s Olympics — so he’s taken to covering his up.
Lyles, 27, who spoke to Us Weekly via his partnership with Tide, exclusively revealed how he’s attempting to hold onto some privacy inside the chaotic Olympic Village.
“When I’m trying to duck my head low, I find myself now wearing a COVID mask. Ironic, right?” Lyles said. “Sunglasses, a hat and a COVID mask gets the job done.”
Lyles acknowledged that “the true fans” can still “easily pick me out,” but he’s managed to fool the more casual ones who might only know him from his appearance on the Netflix docuseries Sprint, which was released earlier this month.
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“For most of the people who have only seen me on TV once or twice or watched the doc series once, they don’t know how tall or short I am,” Lyles continued. “It’s a little harder for them.”
Still, Lyles explained that he hasn’t totally closed himself off from interacting with other athletes and Olympic personnel inside the Village — but it has to be on his own terms.
“I already have my set rules,” he said. “I don’t take pictures while I eat, I don’t take pictures when I’m with my girlfriend and I don’t take pictures when I work out. Other than that, everything is pretty fair game. I don’t have a problem with that.”
Lyles’ girlfriend, Junelle Bromfield, is with him in Paris on her own hunt for gold. Bromfield, 26, is set to represent Jamaica in the 4x400m relay, the same event that earned her a bronze medal at Tokyo’s 2020 Summer Olympics.
“We’re training together and competing most of the same days,” Lyles said of their relationship. “We have that mental space to be able to share with each other and continuously feed into each other.”
Lyles also gushed about the support of his mother, Keisha Cane, who arrived in Paris to support her son earlier this week.
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“Knowing that anybody’s here at any moment I need them and always giving encouraging words, it’s very important,” he said. “It’s very nice to have.”
Before Lyles officially hits the track for the first time in Paris to compete in the men’s 100m heats on Saturday, August 3, he’s got his new partnership to thank for keeping him fresh and clean.
“I go through so much laundry, I’m gonna need Tide,” Lyles said. “I mean, I’m a track and field athlete. Just yesterday, I was training, and my coach was talking about the stains on my outfits. Olympians get stains too! We all need to wash our clothes.”
Lyles and 10-time Olympic medalist Carl Lewis came together for Tide’s 2024 Summer Olympics campaign called “Stains Happen to the Best of Us,” which can be viewed here.
