On the first episode of a new podcast called Everybody Wants To Be Us, Lyles opened up about his uphill battle with faith, according to US Weekly.

“I actually grew up in a cult,” he said on the podcast. “It was a cult. It just wasn’t at the level of, ‘Yeah, OK. We’re gonna drink the Kool-Aid.’ But it was super strict.”

The Florida native went on to share a few practices that were set in place for its members.

“All the moms had to be homeschooling their kids and the father was the head of the household, and the church told you who you could date, who you couldn’t date,” Lyles said. “If you got married, it had to be through [them]. That type of behavior.”

Due to the extreme lifestyle the church enforced upon its congregation, Lyles and his family moved to North Carolina for a fresh start.

“We were going to start [at] another church, only to figure out they wanted to do the same thing except they wanted to be the head instead of, not the tail,” he said. “So, we left that, but that kind of really messed up my view [of the] church, and it definitely messed up my mom’s view, so it took her a long time. And even now, she still struggles to trust churches in general, but she never lost her faith in the religion.”

 

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Naturally, Lyles’ outlook on religious organizations has been tainted, though his mother, Keisha Caine, offered him some words of encouragement.

“Everybody gets that idea of, you know, ‘Is there really a God?’ And something that I love is when I was young, she said, ‘God says when you lack faith, ask for a test, and he will provide the test,'” he said. “And I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna ask for the test.'”

What helped Lyles reestablish his confidence in faith was when he fell ill with swine flu before his qualifying race to make the World Youth track-and-field team.

“[I said], ‘God, if you can provide me a way to make this team, I’m not gonna deny it anymore that this is your plan.’ I made the team,” he said. “I was the youngest person to make the team, and I made the team as an alternate but got to run and made it all the way to being ranked ninth in the world. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m sold.'”

Lyles participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where he won a bronze medal in the 200-meter final. As Blavity reported, in August, he became “the fastest man in the world” when he struck gold in the men’s 100-meter final at the 2024 Paris Olympics. He also won bronze in the men’s 200-meter race before pulling out from the men’s 4×100 Meter relay after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

 

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