Is Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill the true fastest man in the world? We may never know the answer.
Noah Lyles, who won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the 2024 Paris Olympics to take the ‘world’s fastest man’ title, announced Monday that his race with Hill had been canceled.
Lyles was speaking on a panel at a Sport Beach event in Cannes, France when someone asked him about the race against the speedy NFL wideout.
‘We were very deep into creating the event. In fact, it was supposed to happen this weekend,’ Lyles said. ‘Unfortunately there were some things, complications, personal reasons that it just didn’t come to pass.’
The speedsters originally announced plans for a summer race in a joint interview with People magazine in February after months of back-and-forth trash-talking on social media. In the interview, Hill and Lyles insinuated the race would be somewhere between 40 yards (36.6 meters) and 100 meters, a compromise that accommodated the different sports backgrounds of the two athletes.
Hill has not let the cancellation stop him from running in other organized events. On Friday, the Dolphins wideout won the 100-meter dash event at a track meet in California with an official time of 10.15 seconds, which set a new personal best for the 31-year-old.
After the race, he held up a sign that said, ‘Noah could never.’
It was a nod to a similar sign that Lyles had written – ‘Tyreek could never’ – on the inside of his sprint bib and showed to the camera after winning a 60-meter sprint at a race in Boston in early February.
Lyles won the gold medal at the Olympics with a personal-best time of 9.78 seconds, which suggests he still could have beaten Hill handily if the two had raced their 100-meter dash.