Olympic 100-meter champion Noah Lyles has canceled his much-anticipated showdown with Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, due to “personal reasons.”
Hill had challenged Lyles to a 50-yard race days after the American sprinter won gold in the 100 meters at the Paris Games last year.
Lyles said that plans were to hold the race against Hill this weekend in New York’s Times Square.
“We were very deep into creating the event,” Lyles told reporters at the Stagwell Global Sport Beach event in Cannes, France. “In fact, it was supposed to happen this weekend.
“Unfortunately, there were some things, complications, personal reasons that it just didn’t come to pass, but we were full on. We were going to shut down New York’s Times Square and everything, it was going to be a lot of fun.”
Hill has boasted that he could beat Lyles in a race, leading to plenty of trash talk between the two men.
When Lyles won his fourth consecutive 60-meter indoor title in February, he playfully tore off his race bib to reveal a scrawled message: “Tyreek Could Never.”
Hill, a two-time state track champion as a high school, ran a 100-meter prelim in a personal-best time of 10.15 seconds in Sherman Oaks, California, last Friday and playfully responded to Lyles by holding a handwritten sign that read, “Noah Could Never.”
Lyles said many people, including potential sponsors, thought the planned race against Hill was all just talk.
“A lot of people didn’t believe it to be true. They thought it was just, ‘Oh, this is just them talking online’,” Lyles said. “The companies didn’t believe it’s real.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
