Noah Lyles of the U.S. You’ve just won the 100 meter gold medal at the Paris Olympic Games. What are you going to do next?
Well, he’s going to the X world—formerly known as the Twitter world—and post the following: “I have Asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety, and Depression. But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become. Why Not You!”
Yep, that’s what Lyles did on Sunday night after winning what may have been the closest 100 meter race in Olympic history by 0.005 seconds over Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson. It “may have been the closest” since the 1980 Olympics race in Moscow was pretty darn close too but such races weren’t timed in the thousandths of seconds back then.
Nevertheless, after achieving the superhuman feat of being the fastest of the fastest men in the world, Lyles decided to send a decidedly human message to everyone. His X post marked the spot as it got over 280K likes as you can see here:
This certainly wasn’t the first time that Lyles has gone public about his mental health challenges. Back in 2020—you know, when that whole Covid-19 pandemic thing was keeping major track meets from happening and things in general were kind of shall we say chaotic—Lyles struggled with depression. In August 2020, he revealed that he had started an antidepressant medications and called it “was one of the best decisions I have made in a while” as seen in the following tweet (which is what such posts were called back then):
The many positive responses showed how meaningful and inspiring Lyles’ tweets and revelations about his struggles can be to the many people out there struggling with mental health issues. An Olympian like Lyles can make things like running seem so easy. And his feats can make him seem almost superhuman so that it’s easy to forget that top athletes have to struggle with, you know, human things as well.
The same can be said about the many people struggling with asthma and allergies too. It may be hard to picture a guy who just traversed 100 meters in 9.784 seconds as having difficulty breathing. But Lyles has a long history of asthma. His first asthma attacks came in the form of coughing fits when he was just three years old, according to a report from Aishwarya Kumar for ESPN. But he wasn’t diagnosed with asthma until he had reached five years of age.
Asthma is a chronic condition where the airways in your lungs can periodically narrow, swell and fill with mucus. This can make it difficult, very difficult or even life-threateningly difficult to breathe. As you probably learned the first time you went on a date, it is quite important to be able to breathe normally. Breathing is what gets oxygen into your lungs and thus into your bloodstream where it can be delivered to all of the cells in your body.
It’s not always clear what may trigger an asthma attack. Irritants in the air such as dust, dust mites, smoke, animal dander or various chemicals may cause your airways to react in bad constricting way. Changes in air temperature, stress and exercise may do so too.
Asthma did have a big impact on Lyles’ childhood. After Lyles was diagnosed with asthma, his mother made alterations in their home environment and his diet in order to reduce exposures to potential triggers. At seven years of age, Lyles underwent surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids, which further helped his breathing. His asthmatic attacks kept him being homeschooled early on, according to a 2020 article by Richard Parr for CNN. Lyles told Parr, “So about three to four, all the way to about seven years old, I was dealing with asthma and asthma attacks seriously, like in the hospital, maybe every third night; coughing fits, constantly sick because my immune system was weak.”
After his asthma become more manageable, Lyles eventually joined other kids in public school. But while there, he struggled with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and dyslexia for a while. He also described to Parr how “it became a situation where I was kind of alienated from the rest of my friends. It was a lot harder to go through standardized testing and even simple things like spelling tests.” Lyles continued by saying, “Spelling tests were probably the worst days of my life.”
You don’t have to spell out how things are quite different for Lyles these days now that he is a track superstar. He’s got legions of fans around the world, and his asthma doesn’t seem to be interfering with his life. But his social media post after his 100m victory was a reminder that things weren’t always that golden for him. And maybe this reminder can help others currently in the midst of darker days keep running towards their dreams.
