Noah Lyles Is ‘Living Out My Dream’ with a New Side Hustle Off the Track (Exclusive)

Noah Lyles has a side hustle.

The seven-time world champion track star, 28, opened up about his latest passion project away from the track when speaking with PEOPLE exclusively at New York City Comic Con on Thursday, Oct. 9.

Lyles has teamed up with Crunchyroll for a new anime-inspired capsule collection powered by Adidas, a collaboration that’s significant to the athlete who’s made his love known for the hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan.

“It’s everything that I probably could want,” he tells PEOPLE on the Crunchyroll floor at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.

In fact, the Olympic gold medalist — who touts himself as the fastest man in the world right now — is excited to “create his own” items with the brand because “usually track athletes don’t really get merch of their own,” he shares.

“When I was a kid, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to actually make my own anime. I’m going to be a manga artist,’ and all this other stuff,” he recalls. “Things just turned out differently, but here, I’m still living out my dream.”

Lyle’s line with Crunchyroll is a high-velocity clothing collection that fuses speed, story and style, he says.

While life moves at a fast pace for Lyles, who is fresh from winning his fourth consecutive gold medal in the men’s 200-meter at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo last month (tying Usain Bolt as the only athlete to achieve this feat), his discovery of anime as a kid still feels like yesterday to him.

“I remember the day I went over to a sleepover with some of my best friends and we were starting to play Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi,” he says of where his love for the Japanese pop culture phenomenon began.

At the time, Lyles wasn’t familiar with the game like his friends had been.

“They said, ‘If you stay up a little later tonight, because we’re going to stay up all night because it’s a sleepover, we’re going to watch the actual show on Toonami,’ ” he explains of their all-nighter slumber party plan.

“It gets to like 1:00 a.m. at night, and we’re like, ‘Gosh, we’re so tired,’ ” the track star remembered. “But then the show comes on. It’s one of the first episodes of the Cell games, and we’re like, ‘This is amazing!’ ”

Over the years, fans have come to associate Lyles’ with his love for anime, and at World Athletics Championships, Lyles was gifted a plethora of anime merchandise from fans after his races — so much that he needed extra suitcases to take them home.

“I had so many freaking figurines,” he says. “People were just gifting me Goku figurines and towels, blankets, pictures, a ton of stuff, and I was like, ‘I don’t have any more space, guys. Please stop sending me stuff,’ ” he jokes.

“I appreciate it, but it’s too much,” Lyles says with a laugh.