Olympian Wins Races with Yu-Gi-Oh Cards in Tow
- Olympic athlete Noah Lyles flashes YuGiOh cards before races.
- Lyles is building Exodia, a legendary YuGiOh monster.
- He has shown multiple pieces of Exodia during trials.
- Lyles has a bet with shot putter Chase Ealey involving YuGiOh cards.
- He aims to reveal all Exodia pieces during Olympic trials.
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News
Olympic Athlete Keeps Bringing YuGiOh Cards to His Races and Winning
He's currently building Exodia and Lord knows what else he's keeping in his suit.
By Moises Taveras
Published Friday 2:05 PM
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Noah Lyles flashing the head of Exodia at a recent Olympic trial heat.
When did you get into YuGiOh?
Where were you all when I was the last holdout of my middle school lunch period trying to do synchro summons because I thought they were the coolest thing in the world?
There has been a discernible uptick in the trading card game and video game's popularity of late.
Some guy is now pulling out cards and winning Olympic qualifying races like some kind of madman.
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Noah Lyles, who's evidently on his way to representing the US in the Paris Olympics later this year, is also apparently the Olympics' preeminent YuGiOh scholar.
Before his recent heats or races, Lyles has been flashing popular YuGiOh cards to the cameras, including Blue-Eyes White Dragon and the head of Exodia, before tucking them back into his running suit.
To top it all off, or perhaps to add insult to injury, he's been winning these races as well.
Folks, I think we may have discovered the fastest geek alive.
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After flashing the head of Exodia just the other day, Lyles has followed it up in the most delightfully predictable way: two more pieces of Exodia.
For the uninitiated, Exodia is a legendary monster in the fiction of YuGiOh.
It's so powerful that when it was sealed away as a card, it was split into several pieces in the hope that they would never be used for fear of its literal destructive power.
Thus, there are five pieces of Exodia: a head, two arms, and two legs.
In practice, Exodia is one of the most potent monsters to have in your deck because simply drawing all five pieces immediately wins the game.
The modern version of YuGiOh features mechanics that allow for Exodia to be taken out of play or at the very least mitigated so it isn't all-powerful like it used to be.
Still, a player stunned a crowd by winning a tournament using Exodia just last year, so they've still got the juice, and that's seemingly what Lyles is suggesting about himself.
In the same interview where he flashed both the right and left arms of Exodia, Lyles claimed that "Now it's time to build the whole thing. I got the left and right arms and I got the legs coming tomorrow."
When the interviewer had zero clue what Lyles was telling him, he clarified, "All the YuGiOh fans know. Something big is coming."
Lyles isn't just pulling out the cards because he's a huge fan of YuGiOh and anime, though.
In an incredibly cute twist, he's actually flashing them as part of a bet with another athlete, the world champion shot putter Chase Ealey.
According to Lyles, they have a running bet which stipulates that if he flashes YuGiOh cards before his heats throughout the ongoing Olympic trials, Ealey will wear Rock Lee's (of Naruto) leg weights, which ironically make him super fast, and take them off during her own finals.
This might be the best sports anime I've ever seen.
It now seems incredibly likely that we'll see Lyles pull out the entirety of Exodia over the course of his Olympic trials.
Seeing as how he keeps knocking wins back, only time will tell what else he's got up his suit.
I only pray that he makes it to the Olympics and keeps this bit up for the hell of it.
In the meantime, do you think he's taking suggestions?
If so, bring out Black Luster Soldier next, king.
Continue reading.