Olympic medal-winner and world 200-metres champion Noah Lyles was among a distinguished panel during a lecture at CedarBridge Academy yesterday.

The American sprinter took the opportunity to share his story and offer advice to his captivated audience throughout the community-oriented discussion.

“We have our non-profit, the Lyles Brothers Sports Foundation, and we’re always trying to talk to youth,” Lyles told The Royal Gazette. “So anytime we go out to a country, we usually try and get in touch with some type of youth organisation and just give a bit of knowledge that we share.

“We know the story of our life and know there’s some children out there who are dealing with the same things if not harder. So we want to be able to give just a little bit of advice or a little bit of confidence to know that there’s an organisation out there to help you along your journey.”

The response from the audience exceeded his expectations.

“After hearing the questions, I was like ‘there you go; they listened a little more than I thought they were’,” he added.

“You never know what you are going to give. But sharing the knowledge and then hoping that one person gets it is all that you really need to happen.”

Lyles was accompanied by sibling and fellow professional sprinter, Josephus, who was also moved by the level of enthusiasm expressed by the audience.

“It was an amazing experience,” he said. “I felt like the students had so many good questions and that’s interesting because a lot of students don’t want to ask questions and stuff like that.

“For them to just come out and ask so many different questions and be open and vocal, I felt like it was a really good experience and I hope that we were able to give them something.”

The siblings’ mother, Keisha Caine, and Noah’s girlfriend and fellow Olympic medal-winning sprinter, Junelle Bromfield, made up the rest of the panel.

Noah claimed the bronze in 200 metres at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and enjoyed more success after defending his title in the same discipline at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in July.

His winning time of 19.31sec eclipsed four-times Olympic champion and eight-times world champion Michael Johnson’s 26-year-old American record, which previously stood at 19.32.

“It was amazing year. Not only was I able to go out there and break the record and defend my title, but I was able to run more sub-19 seconds than anybody in history,” Noah added. “I believe I got five times now on the all-time board.

“Me and my coach have been talking about that [record] since 2019. We were like; ‘all right, we’ll go after American and then after the second-fastest time and then we’ll go after the world record’. Just chopping off the time, shaving off little by little.”

The 25-year-old is equally as delighted to have made history along with his sibling in the 200 this year.

“He is doing amazing things this year finally being able to break that 20-second barrier,” he added.

“Running 19.93sec made us the first siblings ever to go 19 in the 200 metres and is a great achievement.”

The siblings are now looking forward to sharing more pointers during the USATF/Hershey RunJumpThrow Programme at Whitney Institute today from 11am to 1pm.

“We are going to do a quick Q&A and may go through a drill or two,” Noah explained.

“We are going to get everybody set up and just try and get active enjoying our sports and loving being out there.”

Josephus added: “We are going to give them a little running action and it should be fun.”