Yahoo Sports Paralympian Nick Mayhugh needed a fresh start. He turned to Noah Lyles.
In the months after he reached the pinnacle of his sport, winning three gold medals and setting two world records in track at the Tokyo Paralympics, Nick Mayhugh was more unhappy and unsettled than he ever had been. Sponsors were not making offers, and he couldn’t train because of lingering injuries. Most days, he didn’t know what to do with himself. Mayhugh needed a fresh start, so he turned to a friend for help: Olympic superstar Noah Lyles.
Mayhugh traveled to a track event in Oregon and approached Lyles to ask what felt like a preposterous question at the time: Could he join Lyles’s training camp, which included some of the fastest Olympians on Earth, in Clermont, Fla.?
“He was like: ‘Honestly, it’s an Adidas camp. You’re a Paralympian, and we don’t have any Para guys. It’s an Olympic track … but I’ll do what I can,’” Mayhugh recalled Lyles telling him.
Lyles put Mayhugh in touch with his coach, Lance Brauman, one of the world’s top track coaches who had mentored countless Olympians but only one other Paralympian in recent years. When Mayhugh called, Brauman decided to take a chance.
That long-shot move changed the trajectory of Mayhugh’s path to the Paralympics in Paris to compete in the 100-meter dash and long jump. He rediscovered his joy for life and his sport, largely through therapy and support from his family, but also through his relationship with Lyles, who helped lift Mayhugh up when he was at his lowest.
“Even though he’s younger than me, I look up to him,” Mayhugh said. “He’s a big sense of encouragement for me. He’s not one to cower in any situation.”
Nothing in Paris will be as daunting as Mayhugh’s first day training alongside Lyles and other Olympic hopefuls in Clermont last October. He stepped on the track, and there was Elija Godwin, Udodi Onwuzurike, Gina Lückenkemper, Wayde van Niekerk, among others - “Millions and millions of dollars of feet on the track,” Mayhugh said - and he had never been more intimidated in his life.
Mayhugh was not worth millions of dollars. He wasn’t even sponsored at that point. A former soccer player who had taken up track just a few years earlier, he showed up with green hair and watched as some of the athletes threw up or collapsed in exhaustion on the track after grueling sprints, only to have Brauman draw chalk lines around their bodies as if they were part of a crime scene.
Track is a solitary sport, and its athletes can be standoffish to protect themselves in competition. But Mayhugh found that the group in Clermont considered one another family. Behind Lyles, they quickly adopted Mayhugh as one of their own. Even though he couldn’t run as fast as any of them, he quickly tried to apply anything they taught him. In turn, he tried to educate them about the Paralympics.
“If he was intimidated, he did a good job of hiding it,” Brauman said. “He’s been an integral part of our success this year.”
Brauman also could see similarities in how Lyles and Mayhugh approached their sport. They had become friends a few years earlier, bonding over their connection as Northern Virginia natives, stars in different sports at nearby high schools, although their paths had taken far different turns by the time they graduated.
Mayhugh was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was 14 after he suffered a grand mal seizure and doctors discovered a dead spot on his brain. “We went to the neurologist, and she told Nick he would never play soccer again,” said Scott Mayhugh, Nick’s father. “And Nick literally stood up, looked at his Mom and I, shook his head and said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen.’”
By the end of high school, Mayhugh had earned a soccer scholarship to Radford. He had never heard of the Paralympics until he came across an Instagram advertisement for the seven-a-side soccer national team. He joined and traveled the world with the team, but when the sport was dropped from the Tokyo Paralympics schedule, a U.S. coach approached Mayhugh and asked: What would he think about running track?
Mayhugh had family roots in running - his grandfather, Bill Mayhugh, was a legendary radio host in Washington for decades and a co-founder of the Marine Corps Marathon - and he always had incorporated sprints into his soccer training.
Still, it was stunning how quickly he transformed into a world-class contender. Within 18 months, he had unlocked a gift for sprinting and qualified to run in Tokyo. His performance there was a blur: He won three gold medals and one silver, a haul that included world records in the 100 and 200 meters and a congratulatory phone call from his idol, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
“There wasn’t anybody that could touch him. And that was a big burden to carry on your shoulders,” Scott said. “He came home from the Paralympics, and he had no idea of direction, no idea what he was going to do.”
“No gold medal is going to make you happy. No world record is going to make you happy,” Nick said. “I didn’t know how to deal with myself. I had to take a hard look in the mirror and admit that I needed help.”
He sat down with his family to tell them his mental health was worsening. He sought counseling, including from a hypnotherapist, and resolved to reevaluate his life and career.
Lyles wanted Mayhugh to get a feel for Clermont, a town of about 45,000 outside of Orlando, before he made any decision to move there. He drove Mayhugh around town, and they went to dinner to talk about their futures. They ribbed each other about their medal counts and talked about their high school memories in the D.C. area. A couple of days later, Mayhugh signed a lease on an apartment and reported for training.
Brauman had coached only one other Paralympian in recent years - Jason Smyth of Ireland, a six-time gold medal winner - but he didn’t treat him any differently than his Olympic sprinters. He approached coaching Mayhugh the same way. They built trust, and Brauman relied on Mayhugh to communicate when he was fatigued and needed rest. Structure quickly came back into Mayhugh’s life. He was at the track every day at 9 a.m. sharp to run alongside Lyles and the other Olympians. When he needed pointers on his technique, Lyles gave him advice.
“They are just two guys who hang out,” Brauman said. “Those two guys have a lot of similarities in how they do things.”
When Mayhugh was reclassified last year to compete in a class with athletes with less severe disabilities, effectively keeping him from defending his world record performances in Paris, he turned to Lyles for encouragement as he processed the crushing news.
“He’s always there when I’m frustrated with my training or when we’re talking about the Paralympics or the classification system - anything that is frustrating, visibly or not,” Mayhugh said. He opted not to protest his reclassification, which moved him from the T-37 class to T-38, a decision he believed was made because he was too fast for his impairment.
Brauman also disagreed with the reclassification and knew it would be a steep adjustment for Mayhugh. But he watched Mayhugh work in the months leading up to Paris, even adding a new event, the long jump, to his schedule despite having no experience.
The classification “is supposed to be based off the disability itself, not your ability to overcome it,” Brauman said. “For what he had and the level of effect it had on him, he was in the right classification before, but because he was so good, they moved him up. It’s a learning experience, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time for the training to set in. I think it’s hitting at the right time right now.”
Mayhugh has labored for months over his starts, which are the weakest part of his race. A few weeks before Lyles competed at the Olympics in Paris, where he cemented himself as the world’s fastest man with a gold medal in the 100 meters, he watched as Mayhugh worked on his technique in Florida during a July training session. He left Mayhugh with some lasting words of encouragement.
“He said, ‘Damn man, that’s impressive,’” Mayhugh said. “Sometimes he’ll say it because I’m having a hard day and he’s trying to pick me up … but I felt good about that one.”
He carried it with him to the purple track of Stade de France, where Lyles starred just a few weeks before - and where Mayhugh arrived this week with a new outlook on what defines his success. He finished seventh Saturday in the 100 meters, behind American teammates Jaydin Blackwell, who won gold and set a world record in 10.64 seconds, and Ryan Medrano, who took home silver. Mayhugh was visibly frustrated after he crossed the finish line, but he rushed to give Blackwell a hug and congratulate him.
“As long as I outperform the man who was in Tokyo, mentally and physically,” Mayhugh said, “then I will leave Paris a happy man.”
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