When is Noah Lyles opening his 2025 season? All about Olympic champion's season opener in new event

By Zahid Rashid Dar

Modified Apr 18, 2025 15:27 GMT

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Noah Lyles’ had a phenomenal campaign in 2024 before COVID-19 cut short his season as well as the Olympic campaign in Paris. The 100m Olympic champion is now all set to start his 2025 campaign at the Tom Jones Invitational.

Lyles will be competing in the 400m at the Tom Jones Invitational- his first appearance in the event since 2017. The American sprinter has expressed the desire to run the one-lap event since 2023 and recently announced that he wanted to give it a try.

“Did a 400m workout yesterday and I’m not gonna lie… I think I need to run a 400 soon,” he wrote in March 2025.

Lyles' decision to run the 400m stems from his desire to go for an unprecedented four gold medals at the World Championships and Olympics. He claimed his desire was further fueled by watching Rai Benjamin and Letsile Tebogo’s tight race in the 4x400m relay finals in Paris last year.

“I gotcha. You and @_Kingben_ made that 4x4 look so fun,” he replied when Tebogo encouraged him to run the lap event.

The Tom Jones Invitational will kick off on Friday (April 18), and Lyles is scheduled to run on Saturday at 4:10 pm ET.

Lyles has a personal best of 47.04s, a time he clocked in April 2016. He split 45.68s in the 4x400m relay at the 2024 World Indoor Championships and is expected to clock a similar time on his comeback in the individual 400m.

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Noah Lyles responds to Fred Kerley’s “he's not built like me”

Noah Lyles and Fred Kerley at the Olympic Games Paris 2024: Source: Getty

Former 400m runner turned sprinter Fred Kerley recently claimed that he was a batter sprinter than Noah Lyles. The Olympic medalist further added that Lyles hadn't gone through what he had to go though as a child, arguing “he's not built like me.”

Lyles responded to the comments during a recent episode of his Beyond The Records podcast and said he agreed with his teammate’s comments.

"I never went through that," Noah Lyles acknowledged, before adding of his own childhood health scares: "Just as much as he never was staying up in the hospital every night with asthma, wondering if he's going to be breathing the next morning.

"So yeah, I'm not built like you – and you not built like me. And I'm perfectly fine with that, 'because I've got the Olympic gold."

Kerley had cited a better head-to-head record against Lyles as one of his arguments on being better than the Olympic champion. It is true that he is up 4-2 but it's also true that Lyles broke out as a sprinter in 100m and hasn't lost against Kerley since.