Behind Quincy Wilson's Success Is An Unparalleled Drive For More

Forbes

23-04-2025

PHILADELPHIA—When Quincy Wilson sees a gap, insurmountable or not, his brain often tries to calculate the solution.
Take last year, for example. Facing what seemed like impossible odds in the preliminaries of the Championship of America high school 4x400 at the Penn Relays, the teenager took the final hand-off and passed not one but five athletes on his way to a can-you-believe-it 44.37-second split, anchoring the Potomac, Maryland-based Bullis School to a spot in the finals.
When it happened again a race later, his teammate this time falling on the second exchange, Wilson pulled out another 44-second split and willed his team to third-place.
The experience felt supernatural to anyone who witnessed it in the stands—and no less because it came from a 16-year-old. But afterward, Wilson just kept flying higher and higher, first securing a world U18 record for 400 meters, to then being selected for the U.S. team headed to Paris, to next winning an Olympic gold medal in the Olympics.
To Wilson, that can-do-attitude was simply a part of his makeup.
'I've always just tried to be the last one standing,' Wilson told me recently. 'I try to be the last one standing. Once I find the tactic, I just think to myself, 'If I can beat him on this leg, I'm going to stick to it.''
You can thank his family for that, because it was them who instilled the belief that he can do anything he puts his mind to, whether it's running 44 seconds in the 400 meters, to engineering designs in the classroom, to even winning board games at home.
In fact, Wilson says that indefatigable spirit was partially born out of long Monopoly sessions growing up.
'After a while,' he said, 'I started to win because I stayed up.'
This weekend, the now 17-year-old Wilson heads back to the Penn Relays a completely different athlete than he was a year ago, but with no less quit.
And maybe this time he'll even get the redemption he covets in the 4x400.
Maybe what's so unique about Wilson is that he doesn't look like a 400 meter superstar.
Standing maybe just a shade over 5-foot-9, he doesn't tower over you. He's got a big smile and that Generation Z vibe, maybe a freshly cut fade every three to four weeks. You might find him wearing a bucket hat on a hot day.
He also might be the next great American quarter-miler. Michael Johnson's 400 meter U.S. (and former world) record of 43.18 has stood since 1999.
Will Wilson work his way up to it?
Right now, his all-time best of 44.20 is No. 24 in U.S. history. It's a World U18 record and about four-tenths shy of the World U20 record of 43.87 seconds, which was achieved by American Steve Lewis in 1991.
In June, Wilson finished sixth in the U.S. Olympic Trials at the tender age of 16. To do that, he ran under 45 seconds over three straight rounds. He ran his first sub-46 race two years earlier at the age of 15. And he's been going viral since he was an eighth-grader operating out of Chesapeake, Virginia.
'I feel like (my success) did come at a fast pace,' Wilson said, 'going straight from middle school, when I had that breakout year, to when I ran 47.5 as an eighth-grader. At Bullis, I don't even think he expected my freshman year to go the way that it went out.'
To understand Wilson, who was born in New London, Connecticut, you need to know his family first. His father Roy was a running back in the Navy and commanded a submarine for over two decades before his retirement. His mother Monique, meanwhile, played NCAA Division II soccer for Barton College in North Carolina and later became a housewife.
Wilson's drive to succeed comes from both of his parents, but it's his mother who's often given him a sense of direction. 'She says all the time, 'Stay focused,'' Wilson said. 'If she sees me doing something – if I'm on my phone watching Tik Tok and I don't answer – she'll say 'You're not focused.''
That guidance has served Wilson well, because it's allowed him to develop a sense of balance in a world that might easily pigeonhole him into a specific box. At the Bullis School, where Wilson is finishing up his junior year, he earns straight As and has earned no less than a 94 on his report cards at any time over his academic career. In the classroom, he's developed an interest in mechanical engineering – not to mention sports journalism. And in English class, where Wilson is a whiz with writing essays, he says his classmates tell him, 'I'm the Chat GPT.'
Spend one minute listening to him describe this, and you'll begin to understand just how he's translated that success to the track. Wilson constantly seeks perfection.
'The feeling you get when you have a bad grade, I just can't live with that feeling,' he said. 'A lot of people say, 'Quincy, you can just go out there and just do anything in the classroom.' But I can't live with that feeling.
'I can't live with the bad feeling of not having the work done, or thinking about the work I didn't complete when I go to sleep. That's the type of person I am. I'll be thinking about it in my dreams if I don't complete it.'
Late last year, after Wilson became an Olympian, performed on the world stage, and earned a gold medal for Team U.S.A., he started to emerge as one of the country's next great hopes. After all, he was the youngest track and field athlete to compete for Team USA.
Traveling home afterward, he tried to manage the changing standards the best he could.
'Just trying to accomplish what I want to accomplish, and not worrying about what the outside has to say is a very big thing,' he said.
Wilson knows today the spotlight has changed. Every race he's entered in, especially the ones with high schoolers, his name will be highlighted and bulleted and targeted. In situations where he's racing against high schoolers, Wilson is often mobbed by fans afterward – a recent incident in Virginia Beach saw Wilson and his team nearly toppled by a mass of fans following a performance in the 4x200.
It doesn't mean he's immune to failure.
'Since I've grown up to be kind of a child star, I kind of realize that now people have expectations of me,' he said.
Wilson, instead, has often challenged himself in situations outside his comfort zone. He raced at 500 meters in January and then 600 meters in February. Wilson finished both of those races outside first place.
With each loss came equal, and possibly greater, understanding. Squaring off against professionals and Olympians at the New Balance Grand Prix in January, Wilson ran a career best 45.66 seconds for 400 meters indoors. Then in March, he followed up with his third straight national high school title at the distance. Wilson often uses setbacks to fuel him.
'Just coming in with confidence I think can be the best thing,' he said, 'because you have to attack those days you don't feel like going up that last hill … but knowing you had a purpose and a goal, I feel like you know where it got you.'
Off the track, Wilson's been more protective of his inner-circle. His best friends at Bullis – Colin Abrams, Chris Tangelo and Javonte Williams – remain his closest allies. The foursome, all track athletes with big-time futures ahead, insulate one another and offer encouragement on the sometimes larger-than-life stage they're performing on.
'We try to live the moment the most we can,' Wilson said,' because we know that some of these opportunities we have may never come again.'
And then there are other support systems, too. People you wouldn't quite expect.
They're even located hundreds of miles away.
Vernon Norwood lives and trains in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But when the 33-year-old track and field Olympian and multiple-time gold medalist puts on his headset and turns on the television, he opens a different world.
There, he'll find Wilson, who's quick to talk smack about his team on NBA 2K – Wilson plays with a character which resembles himself, only it can dunk and shoot 3s like an NBA player.
'It's like big bro, little bro,' Norwood said recently. '(Quincy) is a phenomenal athlete and it's rare to see that type of talent come around. So when you do, you want to nurture and develop it and make sure he can become the greatest.'
In June, he met Wilson for the first time, and the pair immediately hit it off. 'He's a great friend, mentor, brother, anything you can say about him,' Wilson.
A couple months later, while they were in Paris, Norwood acted as Wilson's chaperone anytime he had to leave the village – a rule in place for any athletes under 18 years of age.
That bond remains today. Both are affiliated with New Balance, with Norwood sponsored by the brand as a professional and Wilson on an Name, Image and Likeness deal.
'I try to tell him, 'Keep the main thing the main thing,'' Norwood said. 'Being such a high profile person now, it will come with a whole lot. He has to stay grounded. You have to stay true to yourself and how you are … a lot of times, there are moments. And I say, 'Bro, just focus on the moments.''
Wilson will be one of the main attractions in Philadelphia this weekend.
On Instagram, the high schooler has amassed over 388,000 followers and continues his ascent up the technicolor world of stardom.
Everywhere he goes, he attracts attention – from pictures to videos and selfies.
Coming off such a high-profile performance at The Penn Relays in 2024, the Maryland teenager enamored the largely Jamaican fanbase and welcomed the thought of an American team usurping the Jamaican dominance, which has held strong since 2007 in the 4x400 – in fact, the last U.S. team to win the division was Long Beach Poly.
Of course, Bullis School will be arriving off a loss of their own. The team was taken down by Miami Northwestern High School in the final of the 4x400 at the Florida Relays in early April.
Wilson, having won the 400 meters that day in 45.27, came up empty over the final 100 meters and was passed by Miami Northwestern's Tywan Cox – a football star headed to the University of Illinois.
Perhaps it was all the ammo Wilson needed to re-charge and take flight again. Whatever situation that presents itself this weekend, he will be ready for the outcome.
'It's about how much you want it,' he said.