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Meet 16-Year-Old Track and Field Star Quincy Wilson: "Hard Work Is Paying Off"
At 16, the Maryland native is the youngest male to ever join the U.S. Olympic track-and-field team.
Sprinting phenom Quincy Wilson, just like time, goes by in a flash in a race.
Now, this rising junior at Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland, is ready to step up at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
Wilson has already notched a place in the history books en route to Paris, where he has qualified as a member of the 4x400 meter relay pool. This means Wilson is the youngest male to ever join the U.S. Olympic track-and-field team, per NBC News.
In the City of Light, he will be one of multiple runners who could compete in either the mixed 4x400m relay or the men’s 4x400 relay. If Wilson steps up and competes, he will become the youngest man to ever represent the U.S. in track-and-field at the Olympic Games.
The teenage track star is keenly aware of the age factor. “I’m 16 and running grown man times,” he told NBC Sports.
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What is Quincy Wilson’s 400m time?
The 400m run, an Olympic men’s event since 1896, is an event where fractions of a second matter in enormous ways.
At the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials in June, the 16-year-old from Bowie, Maryland was on fire. Wilson won his 400m heat with a scorching fast personal best and world under-18 record of 44.66 seconds.
Wilson actually lowered that time even further in the semis, finishing third in 44.59 seconds, yet another, and even better, under-18 record.
Wilson’s 400m finals finish at Olympic trials was 44.94. That placed him sixth — and just fractions of a second off of locking in an individual running spot.
The top three finishers in the 400m finals who punched their tickets as individual runners to Paris are Quincy Hall (44:17), Michael Norman (44:41) and Chris Bailey (44:42).
Wilson’s performance at the trials had him over the moon. It was fast enough to break the record for runners under 18 that’s been on the books for 42 years, NBC News reported.
“I’ve never been this happy a day in my life when it comes to track,” Wilson said after the semifinals. “I’ve been working for this moment.”
Breaking the longstanding record twice within days “means a lot to me,” he added. “It means the hard work is paying off.”
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Who is the second youngest Olympian?
Breaking records and notching one’s spot in the history books is a part of the Olympics. It’s also part of what makes the Games so edge-of-your-seat thrilling.
Just as Wilson broke a 42-year-record at trials, he could update a 124-year-old record. At the Paris Games in 1900 Arthur Newton, at age 17, became the youngest American man to compete for Team USA at the Olympics.
Newton finished fourth in the steeplechase and fifth in the marathon at the 1900 Paris Olympics. As a second-time Olympian at the 1904 St. Louis Games, Newton took the bronze medal in both the steeplechase and the marathon and gold in the 4-mile team race.
