Noah Lyles Estimates He Could Run 4.1-4.2 40-Yard Dash Amid Tyreek Hill Race Talk

Olympic champion sprinter Noah Lyles, who is currently planning a race with Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, says he has a "pretty good idea" he could run a 40-yard dash in under 4.2 seconds.

"I'm thinking it's going to be somewhere between a 4.1 and a 4.2, flat," Lyles said at the 9:45 mark of Cam Newton's Funky Friday Podcast.

Hill ran the 40-yard dash in 4.29 seconds ahead of the 2016 NFL draft, but wrote on social media before the 2025 draft that watching the combine had him "feeling like I can run a 4.2."

Lyles told Newton his own estimate was based on watching Christian Coleman, who later went on to set the world record for the indoor 60-meter race, clock a 4.12-second time when running the 40-yard dash in 2017.

"He's definitely a better starter than me, but I'm still within the top 10 for best 60's ever," Lyles said about Coleman.

Lyles, who won the 100m race at the 2024 Paris Olympics in a 9.784-second photo finish, clocked a personal-best 60m time of 6.43 seconds last year. Coleman set the world record 60m time of 6.34 seconds in 2018.

Lyles also provided some background to Newton as to why he had agreed to race Hill.

"He's going off after the Olympics, talking about, 'Yeah, yeah, I could beat Noah Lyles.' And I knew he would do that, because he does it every time somebody fast, new comes around," Lyles said. "And as a kid, I've watched him do this for years. I'm just like, 'Man, if he ever puts my name in his mouth, we racing.'

"Because I feel like so many people are so against it in the track world, 'cause it's like, 'Why would you demean yourself to that? Why would you put yourself down to their level?' And in my head, it's like, this is just another opportunity. If we're over here trying to prove that we're the fastest people in the world, but we only race other track people, how are they going to really know how fast we are?"

Hill and Lyles said during a February interview with People's Natasha Dye that they planned to hold a race against one another in the spring or summer, although no official location, date or distance has been set.