American teenager Quincy Wilson breaks under-18 400m record for fourth time

New York Times

7 hours ago

Quincy Wilson ran 44.10 seconds for 400m at the Ed Murphey Classic in Memphis to break the under-18 world's best mark for the fourth time.
Wilson, who turned 17 this January, beat a field including senior United States athletes Bryce Deadmon and Elija Godwin, both Olympic and World Championship relay medallists.
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'If you see my races before, I haven't been getting out (of the blocks well),' Wilson told the crowd after. 'My coach has been telling me 'stay on the process, do what we've got to do.'
'I went out there and shot out like a bullet. I'm super thankful and blessed.'
He was running in lane five, inside Bahamian Steve Gardiner, who was the 400m individual champion at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Wilson got out so quickly that he was up on Gardiner's shoulder by 80m, though the 29-year-old did pull up before the end of the race.
The performance means the teenager now accounts for six of the top 10 fastest times ever run by an under-18, and it moves him up to second on the under-20 all-time list — behind American Steve Lewis, who clocked 43.87s at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul as a 19-year-old.
So far in 2025, only Zakithi Nene (43.76s), Khaleb McRae (43.91s) and Jacory Patterson (43.98s) have run faster for 400m than Wilson, who is tied fourth with 2024 Olympic silver medallist Matthew Hudson-Smith.
He is still a high schooler. In February and March he strung together an excellent indoor season, finishing fifth at the US indoor national championships, and became the first athlete to run sub-46s indoors for 400m before turning 18.
Wilson clocked 45.66s in Boston at the start of February and then went back there the following month to win the individual title at the high school national championships. He ended that meet by anchoring Bullis to the 4x400m relay gold in a time which bettered their own national record (3:09.44).
Wilson anchored them to another national high school record last month at Penn Relays, splitting a 43.99s 400m as the final runner of the quartet. Their combined time was 3:06.31s, breaking a record which had stood for 40 years.
US trials for the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo start at the end of this month. Wilson became the youngest American male Olympian in track and field last year when he went to the Paris Games as part of the relay squad — he is the youngest male track gold medallist, having led off the men's 4x400m in the heats (heat runners were also given medals even if they did not run in the final itself).