TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Who would win in a race? “The Fastest Florida Florida man in the World” or the “Cheetah“?
There’s been an ongoing debate surrounding the question of who would win in a race between Olympic 100-meter gold medalist and track star Noah Lyles and Miami Dolphins Pro Bowl wide receiver Tyreek Hill, with both athletes confidently claiming they’d smoke their competition.
According to NBC News, the feud between the two began this month when Hill was asked on the “Up & Adams” podcast about Lyles’ controversial comments that champions in American sports leagues shouldn’t be considered world champions.
Lyles made the comments about NBA players last summer, which caused quite a controversy heading into the 2024 Summer Olympics. After Lyles, a Florida native, took bronze in the 200-meter sprint, it didn’t take long for social media to call him out on his third-place victory.
“Noah Lyles can’t say nothing after what just happened to him,” Hill told host Kay Adams after Lyles’ took bronze after racing with COVID. “Pretend like he’s sick, I feel like that’s horseradish. So for him to do that and say that we’re not world champions of our sport, come on, bruh. Just speak on what you know about, and that’s track.”
When asked what would happen if Hill, who calls himself “cheetah” and Lyles, who claims to be the “fastest Florida man in the world” raced, the NFL star said: “I would beat Noah Lyles. I wouldn’t beat him by a lot, but I would beat Noah Lyles.”
Lyles responded to Hills’ claims in an interview with NBC Sports stating that he didn’t even know who Hill was.
“What’s the cheetah guy from football? Well, I can’t remember his name,” he said.
“The Florida man dodges smoke. I don’t got time for that. He’s challenging me. We’re racing in the 100, we can race. If he’s truly serious about it. If he’s truly serious about it, and I’m not talking about you’re just talking on the internet … you’ll see me on the track,” Lyles said.
While Hill is considered to be one of the fastest players in the NFL, if not the fastest, former Buccaneer and Hall of Fame cornerback Rondé Barber said the race wouldn’t be close at all, despite Hill running track in college.
Rondé Barber weighs in
Like Hill, Barber also ran track.
“I was a very good prep hurdler. When I was in high school, I was an indoor national champion in the 55-meter hurdles. I won state four, five times in indoor and outdoor in high school. You know — Roger Kingdom, Renaldo Nehemiah — these guys have played football and ran track and I wanted to be them and I thought I was going to be an Olympian but I went to college and football became a bigger priority,” Barber told WFLA’s JB Biunno and Olympic gold medalist Brooke Bennett on Monday.
Although Barber has hoisted the Lombardi Trophy, he said track and field is still his first love.
“I love track and field. Football, obviously, was my career but to this day, track and field is my first love,” he said. Which makes him the perfect person to weigh in on the Lyles-Hill feud.
When asked about the speed between an NFL elite athlete versus a sprinter in track and field on the world level, Barber said track athletes would “destroy” any “fast football player.”
“Oh, trust me, [track athletes] do it for a living, they will destroy any ‘fast’ football player,” he said.
“I was a good hurdler in high school because I started when I was young, like really, really young, I think I was in sixth grade the first I went over a hurdle, and by the time I got to 10th grade, and was competing on the higher level, I had been perfecting my craft for four years and I think about these sprinters, Noah Lyles or whomever, why they’re so fast, why they’re running nine somethings regularly now and like 10.5 [seconds] was fast back in the day, it’s just technique, they’ve perfected it,” the former NFL star explained.
In college, Hill posted a personal best of 10.19 seconds in the 100 meters. Meanwhile, Lyles clinched gold in the Paris Games, running a 9.79 over the same distance.
According to NBC News, Hill’s challenge of a 50-yard race would be a little less than half the distance of a 100-meter sprint; however, as of Tuesday morning, Lyles had not yet responded to the challenge.
