2 weeks Ago By Matthew DeGeorge
PHILADELPHIA — Officially, the 129th edition of the Penn Relays won’t hold its Olympic Development races until Saturday. Quincy Wilson, characteristically, was ahead of schedule Friday. The Bullis School junior, already an Olympic relay gold medalist and the youngest male American Olympic track & field athlete ever, is the biggest prospect at Penn Relays this weekend.
And he showed why. Wilson split an otherworldly 43.99 seconds to help Bullis School of Maryland rally from fifth place to second and nearly upstage the Jamaican powers in the 4 x 400 boys Championship of America.
Kingston College managed to hold off Wilson with a time of 3:05.93, though with 20 more meters, Wilson might have had the win. Bullis’ squad of Mickey Green, Cam Homer, Colin Abrams and Wilson went 3:06.
31, which obliterates by 1.09 seconds the national high school record of Hawthorne (Calif.) that had stood since 1985 at 3:07.
40. “To be able to break it – and we didn’t just break it, we broke it by whole second – that shows the dedication and hard work for each and every one of us,” Wilson said. “We came out here and executed our race.
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I’d say that’s a win for us.” Wilson got the baton in fifth place. He made quick work of many of the runners in front of him, no one else splitting better than the 45.
04 of Kingston anchor Marcinho Rose. That allowed Wilson to scoop up three teams in front of him, including Calabar, which had been leading. Kingston’s quartet ultimately got to the line first, with Jabulani McLeod, Markel Smith, Roshawn Lee and Rose.
But Wilson, racing for the win beyond all else, nearly played spoiler. “I wasn’t really thinking about a time,” he said. “I’m just trying to get our team back to first place.
That’s what we talked about: All the hard work, everything, just trying to go and bring it home for the team.” Wilson burst onto the scene last summer. He was the fastest Under-18 runner in the world over 400 meters by more than a second with his 44.
20 in July. He finished sixth at Olympic Trials, and the U.S.
added him to the relay pool for Paris. He got a taste of the Olympics by running in prelims to earn the gold that the finals team secured in finals. Bullis is coming off an indoor season where it ran the fastest time in the country in the 4 x 400 in 3:09.
44 with Homer, Abrams, Wilson and Alexander Lambert, at Indoor Nationals in March. Wilson’s 1:02.49 was the fastest 500 meters nationally in the indoor season, while Homer’s 33.
43 in the 300 was also a U.S. No.
1 time. Wilson has been running this season with a Bible verse, Mark 9:23, and the words, “Let go, let God” written on his spikes. They’re a tribute to Bullis assistant football coach Ray Butler, who passed away in September.
To Wilson, they’re a reminder to run free – or rather, his version of free, which comes with taking on but understanding how to harness the pressure that his stature in the sport brings. “I told (my teammates), I’ve been on the big stage, so I said, if they had any pressure, if they were nervous, put it all on me,” he said Friday. “Because I’ve been on the biggest stages, and I know what it takes to get it done.
So like I said, throw the pressure on me.”.
