Noah Lyles: “It Hurts” That USAs Will Not Be Shown on NBC This Year
By Jonathan Gault
EUGENE, Ore. — On the eve of the 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships, US sprint star Noah Lyles admitted that “it hurts” that the only live TV coverage of the meet will be on CNBC — the first time in 17 years that no portion of the meet will air live on NBC.
“It hurts to see,” Lyles said, speaking at a pre-meet press conference on Wednesday. “Because we have had a long history with NBC but I think it’s a situation where there was just a lot of conflict [with other events].”
July 6-9 was one of the two protected windows protected by World Athletics in order for federations to stage their national championships this summer. Earlier this week, USATF told LetsRun.com that based on those windows and input from a number of parties, including elite coaches and USATF’s High Performance Division Executive Committee, USATF’s High Performance Team “jointly determined that July 6-9 would be the best dates for this event for optimum performance at both National Championships and World Championships.”
Those dates wound up conflicting with other NBC programming — the network will air the US Women’s Open golf tournament from 3-9 p.m. ET on Saturday and Sunday and re-runs of America’s Got Talent from 9-11 p.m. ET while USAs will air on CNBC from 9-11 p.m. ET each night.
LRC Network NBC Will Not Air Live Coverage of USATF Outdoor Championships for First Time Since 2006
“I mean, if we look at the contract, I know that NBC and USATF have a contract where they have a set amount of hours for the year and if you count up most of the track meets that we have, I think we may have run out of those hours,” Lyles said. “And that’s between them two (NBC Sports and USATF).”
The contract requires NBC Sports to present at least 18 hours per year of live USATF event coverage, with a minimum of eight hours to be shown on NBC. Between the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, Millrose Games, USATF Indoor Championships, USATF Bermuda Grand Prix, USATF Los Angeles Grand Prix, and USATF NYC Grand Prix, NBC has so far shown 11.5 hours of live coverage in 2023, with four more hours set to come at the Prefontaine Classic in September.
Lyles after his win at the USATF NYC Grand Prix on June 24 (Kevin Morris photo)
Lyles made his comments just hours after NBC Sports announced it will release a two-part docuseries on Lyles’ 2023 season to be shown exclusively on its Peacock streaming platform. Untitled: The Noah Lyles Project will air in two parts, with part one premiering on August 18 — the day before the World Championships begin in Budapest — and part two premiering on September 15 — the day before the Diamond League final in Eugene.
Lyles will run the 100 meters only at this week’s USATF Outdoor Championships as he will look to qualify for Worlds in that event for the first time. His goal this season is to win both the 100 and 200 (where he has a bye as defending champion) at the World Championships.
“We haven’t had a doubler since Bolt [in 2016],” Lyles said. “And it’s about time we had one. Why not me?”
In his last race before USAs, Lyles ran 19.83 at the USATF NYC Grand Prix on June 24. It was his 34th time breaking 20 seconds, tying him with Usain Bolt for most all-time. Lyles said the achievement, while a testament to his consistency, will likely sound more impressive to a casual sports fan than a trackhead. And if that is the case, he said he is perfectly fine with it.
“A lot of people in the track & field world will be like, so what?” Lyles said. “You ain’t got no world records. So what, you just did it a bunch of times? Well to the track & field world, it might not mean that much. But to everybody who doesn’t watch track & field or only watches during the Olympics, when they hear that my name is right next to Usain Bolt’s or when it’s going to surpass his record, they’re now going to draw eyes to be like, Oh, I loved Usain Bolt, let me see what this guy’s doing. That’s how we get eyes on track & field.”
