“Duh duhduhduh da-duh!” Lyles sang. “The champ is here!”

Lyles is a champion many times over, except in the one place that matters most to the broader sporting universe. He arrived in Paris as both the world’s most dominant sprinter and, owing to timing and a tumultuous 2021, a man in search of his first Olympic gold.

The hole in his résumé has not stifled his bombast. For the Opening Ceremonies, Lyles painted the letters I-C-O-N on his fingernails. At Monday’s news conference, he explained how his Tokyo bronze medal had instilled a desire to make himself impervious to defeat even on off-days. The result, he said, is that an opponent will have to surpass his very best to beat him.

“To be honest, when Noah Lyles is being Noah Lyles,” Lyles said, “there’s nobody.”

That was true at the U.S. Olympic trials, where Lyles won both the 100 and 200 meters. It was true at the 2023 world championships, where Lyles claimed gold in the 100, 200 and 4×100 relay. Lyles aims to repeat his triple gold here, while taking aim at Usain Bolt’s 19.19-second world record in the 200, an event in which Lyles has won 26 consecutive races.

The stakes are clear. If he performs the way he has proven capable, he will etch himself in U.S. track and field history, with a chance to further burnish his legacy four years from now in Los Angeles. If he lands somewhere other than the top of a podium, he will face persistent questions about his ability to summon his best on the sport’s biggest stage.

By talent and accomplishment, Lyles is already an undeniable all-time sprinter. He owns six world championship titles, three of them bagged in last summer’s monumental treble. Only two men — and no Americans — have run 200 meters faster. He is the 100 meters world champion and still improving, evidenced by his personal-best 9.81-second race at the London Diamond League meet earlier this month.

By résumé, though, Lyles lacks the prize that allows him to rightfully claim the status stenciled on his fingernails, even as he enters the last Olympics of his 20s. He barely missed making the team at the 2016 U.S. trials as a precocious 18-year-old, then had to wait an extra year, until he turned 23, for his Olympic debut in Tokyo.

The isolation of the pandemic and the anguish he felt after George Floyd’s murder made 2021 the most turbulent year of Lyle’s life. Typically effervescent, he openly discussed turning to antidepressant medication, which he stopped taking before the U.S. trials because he believed it affected his weight and training.

Lyles didn’t make the 100-meter team and finished third in Tokyo in the 200, still his worst finish as a professional. The dearth of crowds sapped Lyles’s enthusiasm even as he approached the start line for introductions.

“We’re all just standing behind our blocks,” Lyles said. “That’s usually the moment when in my head I’m like, ‘It’s showtime!’ And I just remember [thinking], ‘This is not it. This is not cool. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I thought it was going to be like.’ That’s literally the last few thoughts I had when I got into the blocks. And it sucked.”

After the Tokyo 200 meters, Lyles bawled speaking with reporters, sharing his mental health battle in hopes he could help others. He also called his bronze medal “boring.”

“I don’t feel different about it,” Lyles said at the U.S. trials last month. “I don’t like that thing. But I think by not liking it, it gives me the fire to keep going and keep pressing. Every time I turn around, I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m doing enough. Then I turn around and look at the medal — ‘Alright, back to work.’ ”

Lyles focused most of his work on the 100, a race he only recently came to dominate. He won silver at this year’s 60-meter indoor world championship, signaling to the track world that Lyles, previously known to start slowly, was getting faster out of the blocks.

Lyles’s first days in Paris have not been all smooth, he said Monday. Lyles has always courted fame, but since Netflix released “Sprint,” the docuseries in which he stars, he has sometimes found more of it than he wants. Other athletes and volunteers have mobbed him in the Athletes Village. Lyles has spoken to his therapist about how he can protect his space, he said, and he even began eating meals at off-hours with his girlfriend, Jamaican 400-meter runner Junelle Bromfield, so he can seclude himself.

Though other famous athletes stay away from the Village, Lyles said, “I don’t want to leave. But it’s definitely something I feel like after this Olympics I’m going to have to have conversations higher up than me in terms of making that more aware.”

Lyles said he shared his frustration to draw U.S. Olympics officials’ attention, but also to be honest with himself about what’s troubling him. He lied to himself during his mental health struggle in 2021, he said. Now, he wants to let himself feel every emotion. There’s been plenty of gratitude. He’s barely taken off the hat he wore to the news conference, given to every American Olympian and stitched with the words “made it.”

“I can finally say I’m showing up for an Olympic Games not depressed,” Lyles said. “It feels amazing. A lot of joy. I can always think back to the last Olympics and be like, ‘No, this one is not the same. This one is way better and I’m ready to show it.”

Lyles’s path to three golds is far from clear. Despite his supremacy in the 200, American Kenny Bednarek, the reigning Olympic silver medalist, led Lyles after 100 meters at the U.S. trials and challenged him with a personal best 19.59 seconds. In the 100, 21-year-old Kishane Thompson won the Jamaican trials in 9.77 seconds, the fastest time this year — and faster than Lyles has ever run.

Thompson’s performance led some observers to claim Lyles no longer deserved the title of world’s fastest man. He disagreed on social media, then reiterated his stance Monday: The crown belongs to either the reigning Olympic champion or the current world champion.

“Which I am one of,” Lyles said, pausing briefly. “And soon to be another one of.”