Have You Seen This? Noah Lyles may have rekindled track rivalry with post-race shove

TRACK TOWN, USA — On the track, Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles is quickly becoming a class of his own.

Is the 28-year-old sprinter's many off-track beefs good for the sport, though?

That was the question many were asking after the weekend, when Lyles won the 200-meter title at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, overtaking Kenny Bednarek in 19.63 seconds to win by .04.

The 5-foot-11 speedster overtook Bednarek down the stretch in the victory, but the former rival's two-handed shove after breaking the tape drew the reaction that an NBC Sports camera picked up Sunday.

"If you got a problem, I expected a call," Bednarek can be heard saying. "That's all I'm saying."

To which Lyles responded: "You know what, you're right. Let's talk after this."

Bednarek declined to discuss the shove afterward with the media in Eugene.

"Noah is gonna be Noah. If he wants to stare me down that's fine," Bednarek said after the race, per USA Today. "I'm very confident I can beat him. What he said doesn't matter. It's just what he did. It's unsportsmanlike (expletive) and I don't deal with that."

It's not the first time Lyles has had beef with a competitor. His thrilling gold medal in the 2024 Summer Games was also remembered for the nudge he gave Jamaica's Kishane Thompson en route to the United States' first 100-meter gold since 2004.

He also responded to a head-to-head challenge from NFL speedster Tyreek Hill. After he won his fourth consecutive 60-meter indoor title earlier this summer, Lyles tore off his bib to reveal a message: "Tyreek Could Never" — a direct response to Hill.

But a reported head-to-head race that would've been a 50-yard sprint between the Olympian and the Miami Dolphins in New York's Times Square was scrapped due to "personal reasons," per ESPN, after Hill ran a 10.15 100-meter dash.

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