Noah Lyles is the reigning World Champion in the 100 meter dash! That is a championship that he was not favored to win, or even make the finals for. He ran 9.83 seconds to do it. The 200 meter World Championship has always been his in recent memory, so it’s safe to say every race from here on out is his to lose. No sprinter in the world right now has proven they can beat him when he runs at his best. However, when any men’s sprinter shows themselves to be this dominant, the comparisons to Usain Bolt come shortly thereafter. Bolt is in a class all by himself. He barely ever lost a race from the 2008 Olympics all the way to the 2017 World Championship final. Basically something catastrophic had to happen for him not to cross the line first. But outside of him, the majority of sprinters who have joined the debate for the greatest sprinters of all time, are America. So this championship raises the question “is Noah Lyles the greatest American sprinter of all time?” All the evidence is pointing towards the truth, that it’s only a matter of time before he earns that title. 

How good is Noah Lyles? 

Noah Lyles is the best sprinter in the game right now. He ran 19.31 in the 200 meter dash, which is technically the third fastest all time. But nobody has ever run faster than that for more than a decade. The 100 meter dash was never considered his specialty as a pro. Although he won the World Youth Championship in the 100 meter dash years ago. He is a World Champion in that event now in 2023. Believe it or not, he is still an American champion in that event back in 2018. For the record, when he pulled that off he was the youngest US champion since 1984! He went professional right after high school, after making the finals of the Olympic Trials, and he hasn’t looked back ever since.

Noah Lyles is actually so good by now, that it is possible to fotget how good he’s already been. He won the Diamond League championship in the 100 meter dash back in 2019, which technically made him the best sprinter in that event for the whole year. He is the most decorated sprinter in the Diamond League as the 200 meter dash champion, every single year since he turned professional when that title was handed out, except once.

Noah Lyles has proven himself as the most successful American sprinter in an era with a whole lot of them. But he does have some competition as the greatest American ever. Both Michael Johnson, and Carl Lewis before him, were the sprinting kings for team USA more than 2 full decades ago. So where does he rate next to both of them?

Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson 

Carl Lewis was box office, at a time when track and field was barely ever on camera to watch. The truth is that sprinting is really a secondary thing that he did. He is easily one of the world’s best long jumpers of all time. His era was just in time for the first World Championship event. He won the first ever 100 meter dash championship in 1983, the first of 3 golds he would win in the event, to go with a 200 meter bronze medal in 1993, a full decade later. As for his Olympic success, he won the 100 meter dash twice, although one of those was from the infamous 1988 games. He won both gold and silver in the 200 meter dash to go with it at the Olympics. That’s a whole lot of hardware for one man, and remember the relays and most certainly the long jump do not count towards his individual sprinting legacy. The truth about Carl Lewis is that he is a product of his era. He was the world record holder in the 100 meter dash in 1991. Regardless of how fast the clock may look now, he was the greatest the world had ever seen at that point.

Michael Johnson on the other hand was really a 200 and 400 meter runner. So his claim to fame as one of the best sprinters has always been up for debate. It is arguable that breaking the 200 meter world record, gets you a seat at the table, regardless of whether or not you run the 100 meter dash. He broke the record at the 1996 Olympics, wearing gold shoes before Bolt would later do the same thing over a decade later. And he is still the only man to win both the 200 and the 400 meter dashes in the same Olympics. That was his only Olympic medal in the 200 and he repeated as 400 champion in the year 2000. But he still  has 6 total gold medals in the World Championships, 2 of which in the 200, and 4 of them in the 400. Michael Johnson was actually the World Record holder in both the 200 and the 400, at that point in history. Which clearly makes him one of the greatest sprinters ever.

How does Noah Lyles compare to the greatest sprinters?

Noah Lyles is competing more than 20 years removed from Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis’s careers. Since that time, Bolt has made it clear that he alone sits at the top of the mountain as the greatest sprinter ever. Now that Noah Lyles already has now won gold in the 100, and the 200 at the World Championships, with more victories undoubtedly to come, his path to become the greatest American is more visible.

Both Lewis and Johnson were World Record Holders in at least one event, so Noah will have to pull that off to get himself truly in the conversation. The 200 meter dash is probably the only event he has a shot at, to actually pull it off. But after his American record, even Usain knows that anything is possible. He’s also going to need to keep racking up individual gold medals at the World Championships. Michael Johnson has 6 of them, more than Lewis ever won, that’s even including the long jump. Regardless it’s still not going to be easy because team USA has a whole bunch of fast men, not to mention the rest of the world, for Noah to compete against.

At the Olympics Noah has to not only win medals but figure out how to win 3 gold medals, just like Lewis and Johnson did. He could technically keep running through 2032 and win gold in the 200 meter dash, at the age of 35. That may sound far-fetched, but Justin Gatlin won his last silver medal at the age of 37. If you really are one of the greats, you can hold off aging like LeBron James does for longer than everybody else. However, both Lewis and Johnson won 2 sprint events at the same Olympics. So if Noah Lyles is really going to claim the throne as America’s greatest sprinter ever, he’s going to need to win the 100 and the 200 in the same Olympics. That’s challenging to say the least but he’s already won the World in both. Furthermore his 100 meter PR right now is already faster than Carl Lewis’s World Record from 1991.

The Bottom Line 

USA track and field takes sprinting very seriously, and they expect to win gold in every event. No matter how many dogs you have in the race, there is always an alpha among them. In 2023 it is clear that Noah Lyles is that man. He’s the best sprinter in America and even in the entire World, at a time in history where the competition has never been better. The last American athlete in an individual sport to perform like this was probably Tiger Woods. When he would enter a championship the question was, are you taking Tiger or the field? The smart money was always to bet on Tiger. That is now true for Noah Lyles and he is a generational talent, the likes of which we haven’t seen in two decades. But he still has a ways to go be the greatest American sprinter ever.

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