Noah Lyles won the bronze medal in the men’s 200 meters at the Paris Olympics on Thursday before bending over in the track, gesturing for water and eventually being carried away in a makeshift wheelchair.
Minutes later, in an interview with NBC, wearing a mask, he said he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 two days before the race.
“I woke up early, around 5 a.m. Tuesday morning and I felt absolutely horrible. I knew it was more than just a 100-something muscle soreness,” Lyles told NBC. “We woke the doctors up and we tested and unfortunately I was positive for COVID.
“My first thought was not to panic because I thought I’ve been in worse situations. I’ve run in worse conditions, I thought. We just took it day by day, tried to hydrate as much as possible, quarantined and I would definitely say it took its toll, but I’ve never been so proud of myself to come here and win a bronze medal. I was very disappointed in the last Olympics and this time I couldn’t be more proud.”
Later on Thursday, Lyles announced in a post on Instagram that his 2024 Olympics are likely over. Immediately after Thursday’s race, he was still unsure whether he would fight to stay on Team USA’s 4×100-meter relay team.
“I believe this is the end of my 2024 Olympics,” he wrote in the post, which included a photo of him with 200m winner Letsile Tebogo. “It’s not the Olympics I dreamed of but it brought so much joy to my heart. I hope everyone enjoyed the show.”
Noah Lyles gives an update on his fitness after the 200m final. #Olympic Games in Paris
📺 NBC & Pauw photo.twitter.com/9Qs1vcBycf
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 8, 2024
Lyles also required medical attention after finishing second in his 200-meter semifinal on Wednesday.
“I just said we were going to try to quarantine as much as possible, stay away, not let it slide and just, honestly, give it our all,” Lyles said. “If I didn’t make it, someone would have taken my spot and that would have been a sign to me that I didn’t deserve to be in the final.”
He was attempting to win the first Olympic double in the 100 and 200 meters since Usain Bolt did so three times in a row from 2008 to 2016. He also wanted to become the first American to do so since Carl Lewis in 1984.
Unlike the previous two Olympics, there will be no mandatory COVID testing at the Paris Games, nor an official protocol if an athlete tests positive. In the throes of the pandemic, both the 2021 Tokyo Games and the 2022 Beijing Games had strict rules on testing and quarantining positive cases, preventing athletes from competing.
The Paris Olympics were billed as the first Games for a world that had moved beyond widespread restrictions, with vaccines and treatments widely available. But the scene on the track, with Lyles’ mother Keisha Caine Bishop As she pleaded with authorities to help her son, she was painfully reminded of how serious the disease was and how widespread the coronavirus was.
Earlier in these Olympics, British swimmer Adam Peaty tested positive after winning silver in the breaststroke on July 28. Six days later, he was back in the pool ready for the 4x100m medley.
Before the Games, five Australian water polo players tested positive and were cleared to play again when they felt better.
“If those five athletes feel well enough to train, then they will do so and they will follow all the protocols that we have,” said Anna Meares of the Australian Olympic Committee.
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(Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
