BOWIE, Md. — A Bowie teenager who doesn't even have a driver's license just made Olympic history.
Quincy Wilson made Team USA for the Paris Olympic Games. At just 16 years old, he is the youngest U.S. male track & field athlete to make an Olympic team, according to Bill Mallon, an Olympics historian.
On Sunday, the young athlete secured a personal best time of 44.59 seconds and surpassed his own under-18 world 400-meter record in the semifinal to advance to the final. It's the second time he beat the record in two days after he clocked in 44.66 seconds on Friday, beating out other runners in his heat and grabbing the record for his own.
Wilson is a rising junior at Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland and is from Bowie.
His coach at Bullis, Joe Lee, broke the news that the teenager was heading to the Olympics.
"I said I have to get him. So I said 'Hey, I just got off the phone with the Olympic Coaching Committee and I've got some unfortunate news,'" Lee said. "He was starting to get a little nervous. So I said, 'I'm sorry to say that you unfortunately are going to have to go to Paris and be part of the Olympic team.' His mother was listening on speaker phone and she was like, 'My heart dropped.'"
We asked Lee if Quincy has any special preparations he makes before he runs. He talked about a particularly ugly pair of shorts.
"He's got this lucky pair of shorts that he wears," he said. "I guess if you want to run fast just wear multi-colored, crazy shorts. I don't know."
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