Today, Noah Lyles is an Olympic champion and one of the biggest names in track and field. But in seventh grade, he was a kid dealing with his parents’ divorce while also navigating ADHD and the effects of the medication he was taking. His parents separated when he was 13, after which Noah and his brother Josephus moved with their mother, Keisha, eventually settling in Alexandria, Virginia.
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It was during that period that Lyles reached a point where he decided he could no longer continue taking his medication the way he had been. He began weaning himself off it, keeping the decision from his mother at first. He recalled the time during an episode of the Ready Set Go and Noah Lyles, Olympian podcast.
“I was in the middle of seventh grade and I was just tired of having zero personality, not being hungry, not feeling like myself, being trapped within my own body. And I’m just like, you know what? I’ve learned enough skills of how to manage this. I’mma be a big boy and I’m going to take myself off [the medication],” Noah recalled on the show. “It wasn’t until probably like three months later where I told my mom, ‘Yeah, I can’t live like this anymore’.”
Noah acknowledged that his grades struggled after he stopped taking the medication, but he also felt that he had regained his personality and sense of identity. For him, it was a complicated trade-off. Academically, things became harder, but emotionally, he felt more like himself again. It was only years later that Lyles started looking back at his childhood from a different perspective.
Overcoming ADHD was not the only challenge he faced at the time. The separation of his parents shaped his worldview and changed the relationship with his father forever.
Noah’s parents, Kevin Lyles and Keisha Caine Bishop, have their roots in track and field. They met while competing at Seton Hall University, where Kevin became a successful 400m runner, and Keisha established herself as a decorated collegiate athlete.
Their separation had a lasting effect on Noah’s relationship with his father. Noah explained that because he lived with his mother after the divorce, he naturally absorbed her perspective. That shaped the way he viewed Kevin for years. The Olympic champion admitted that he carried “a lot of animosity” toward his father, which was one reason he rarely spoke about him.
He recalled how he felt about his father when his sprinting career began to take off. During high school, he found himself caught between wanting his father at his competitions and not wanting him there. He also sensed that his father felt uncomfortable, leaving both of them unsure about how to approach their relationship.
As he developed his own relationship with God and began thinking about having children someday, he started asking himself what it would feel like to be in his father’s position. That question forced him to reconsider the anger he had carried for years. Noah realized that much of what he believed about his father had come from his mother’s perspective because that was the environment in which he had grown up.
He began wondering what Kevin’s story actually was. That realization eventually led Noah to have deeper conversations with his father later in life. Instead of talking only about track, they began discussing their childhoods, family, and life. Noah also learned more about his father’s own experiences, including the fact that Kevin’s parents had also divorced. Those conversations helped Noah see his father in a different way.
Noah Lyles’ relationship with his father has come a long way
Following his victory in the 200m world title in 2019, Noah talked about his father’s influence and even said that he had started his journey in track and field under Kevin’s guidance. Noah’s original ambition was to be an Olympic high jumper, but around age 12, he started running at his father’s club. He trained there until about the age of 15, with Kevin teaching him the importance of “hard work and diligence” and pushing him to believe in his ability.
Their bond wasn’t restricted to training. In a 2024 conversation about growing up in a family of athletes, Noah recalled the long road trips he shared with Kevin and his brother Josephus.
“Me and my brother and my dad just talked about track, numbers, people, records,” Noah recalled.
Those talks provided Noah and his father with a common interest to always keep coming back to. Kevin has also stayed involved with and encouraged his children’s careers. He was overjoyed to be Noah’s father in a 2024 interview with WCNC, telling them that he was proud of his son and that people now know him for his son’s success.
“As soon as people recognize me or see me, and I say, yeah, I’m Noah Lyles’ dad, yes, I see it,” Kevin said with a smile.
Lyles has since turned those difficult years into a career that has taken him to the top of the sport, while also finding a way to rebuild his relationship with his father. The seventh-grader who once felt trapped within his own body is now a 100m Olympic champion, and at 29, he is still adding to his legacy. Fresh off winning the 100m at the 2026 US Championships in a world-leading 9.79 seconds, Lyles will next turn his attention to the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, where he is set to compete in both the 100m and 200m.