Noah Lyles Includes Top Rival on His Mount Rushmore of Greatest Athletes

It’s no secret there’s a bit of a rivalry brewing between U.S. Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles and eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt.

Lyles is on-record stating he believes he’s eventually going to break Bolt’s world record in the 200 meters, and many have been debating if Lyles is actually as fast a Bolt was in his prime.

But despite the competitive enmity between the two, that isn’t stopping Lyles from including Bolt on his Mount Rushmore of greatest athletes.

“Greatest athletes of all time, goodness gracious, on the spot … Muhammad Ali,” Lyles told BuzzFeed . “Then I'm going to put Usain Bolt in there. Before Usain Bolt there was no track and field athlete that actually doubled more than once at an Olympics. The accomplishments that he's made are astronomical. Then I think we'd have to put Michael Jordan on there. And I definitely put Serena Williams on there as well.”

After he won gold in the 100 meters at the 2024 Paris Olympics last week, many media pundits began comparing and contrasting the two track and field stars.

With Lyles fully embracing his new “fastest man on earth” moniker, Bolt took to social media days ago, throwing shade at Lyles with a “1 of 1” caption along with two photos of his dominating win in the 100 meters at the 2012 London Games — a reminder of just how dominant he was when he was competing in the Olympics.

Bolt still holds the Olympic and world records in the 100 meters (9.63 seconds and 9.58 seconds, respectively) and 200 meters (19.3 seconds and 19.19 seconds, respectively).

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