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Lyles said he started feeling ill two days ago and knew it was more than just soreness from winning the 100. In Paris, there are no testing requirements, and national governing bodies develop their own protocols.
Aug. 8, 2024, 5:25 p.m. ET
Almost as soon as he crossed the finish line in the 200-meter dash on Thursday night, Noah Lyles looked winded. He lay on his back on the purple track at Stade de France, after finishing third in a race he had dominated for the last three years, and struggled for breath.
Four days after winning a gold medal in one of the most thrilling endings to an Olympic sprint, Lyles took the bronze in the 200 and considered it, he said afterward, a remarkable achievement. Lyles learned that he had tested positive for the coronavirus around 5 a.m. Paris time on Tuesday, less than 36 hours after he won the 100 in a photo finish that was a stunning start to an Olympic campaign he hoped would position him as the next great American track and field star.
But on Tuesday, after waking up with chills, aches and a sore throat, symptoms he had experienced during previous exposures, Lyles left the athletes’ village to quarantine in a nearby hotel. He said he was taking the antiviral treatment Paxlovid, and that he had not once considered dropping out or revealing his condition in advance of the 200 final. Athletes are not required to test or to report Covid-19 cases.
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“We didn’t want everybody to go into a panic, we wanted them to be able to compete,” Lyles, wearing an N-95 mask, told reporters about 45 minutes after finishing in 19.70 seconds, behind Letsile Tebogo of Botswana (19.46), who won his country’s first Olympic gold medal in its history, and the American Kenneth Bednarek (19.62). Lyles added: “And you never want to tell your competitors you’re sick. Why would you give them an edge?”
