Sometimes getting home from the Olympics can lead to one heck of a reality check.
In the case of Rai Benjamin — who won gold in the men’s 400m hurdles and men’s 4×400 relay at the 2024 Paris Olympics earlier this month — it happened on a lunch date with fellow Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles.
After finishing some grub at burger spot Heavy Handed in Santa Monica, Benjamin, 27, took to his Instagram Stories to explain how his meal came with a side of humble pie.
“Ate with this amazing random family from Canada,” Benjamin wrote alongside a photo of three people sitting at a table on Wednesday, August 21. “They knew who [Noah] was. I was unfortunately chopped liver 😂😂😂😂.”
Lyles, 27, couldn’t help but delight in the ordeal, sharing Benjamin’s post to his own Stories with a crying laughing emoji.
Since Lyles has returned home from Paris — where he won gold in the men’s 100m and bronze in the 200m — the American sprinter has been a busy man on social media and elsewhere.
In a lengthy Instagram post on Saturday, August 17, Lyles defended his girlfriend, Junelle Bromfield, who represented Jamaica in the women’s 400m and 4x400m relay in Paris, from “pure disrespect and hatred towards her from her own country.”
“This woman has been attacked by people who have never met her, heard her name before, never seen her smile, or heard what she believes in,” Lyles, who started dating Bromfield in 2022, continued. “But she keeps moving forward knowing that God will always make a way. Thats why God keeps blessing her!”
Lyles also raised eyebrows recently when he revealed he “grew up in a cult” during a surprising interview.
“It was a cult,” Lyles said on the “Everybody Wants to Be Us” podcast. “It just wasn’t at the level of, ‘Yeah, OK. We’re gonna drink the Kool-Aid.’ But it was super strict.”
Lyles did not name the specific organization his family was affiliated with, but did divulge more details about his upbringing.
“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,” he explained. “If you got married, it had to be through [them]. That type of behavior.”
In an exclusive interview with Us Weekly before he competed in Paris, Lyles acknowledged that his attitude sometimes isn’t for everybody — including some members of the Team USA men’s basketball team and Miami Dolphins star Tyreek Hill — but he said that all goes out the window when you sit down with him face-to-face.
“The most misunderstood thing is the balance between cocky and confident,” Lyles said. “There is a strong line that people assume my confidence is cockiness. I will say this. Anybody who thought I was cocky and met me, they’re instantly like, ‘Oh, that’s the nicest, coolest guy I’ve ever met in my life.’”