Sprinting event and direct – Bullis School student Wilson is already a future star of American track and field. The coming Friday night came suddenly. With “Bullis” emblazoned on the front of his uniform, Wilson ran the 400 meters in 44.66 seconds, breaking the under-18 world record and Darrell Robinson’s 42-year-old American record.
Wilson walked to the starting line in singles to get himself framed by the design of the Maryland state flag. He had never broken 45.13 seconds before but clocked 44.84, the under-18 world record set by Justin Robinson five years earlier.
“I’ve been watching this all season,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s time eclipsed the American high school record by 0.03 seconds. It also allowed him to win his heat comfortably and make him the second-fastest qualifier for Sunday’s 400m semi-finals. The top three winners of Monday’s final will advance to Paris. With the field wide open behind world champion Michael Norman, Wilson made himself a legitimate threat.
“I expected him to run faster,” said Chris Bailey, the third-fastest qualifier. “I didn’t expect him to run. That’s what he said. Fast. And I will give him his goods. What he has been doing all year has been amazing.
Friends at Hayward Field noted Wilson’s early service. When the public address announced his name at the starting line, Wilson received the biggest cheer. In her first game of the season after Athing Mu recovered from a hamstring injury, Shakari Richardson began her quest to make her first Olympic team, and Oregon native Ryan Kreuzer needed just one throw to finish the shot put, and Wilson became the main attraction. .
“The game is different,” Wilson said. “I’m not going to high school anymore. I’m running with the big dogs.
There is no missing Wilson youth. Kok hardly has a fuzz, and his smile – “that million-dollar smile,” says coach Joe Lee – makes him look even younger than the under-16s. He waved to the crowd as he crossed the line and received more cheers as the happy hour was posted on the scoreboard.
“Probably more like a type 2,” Wilson says of nerves on a scale of 1 to 10. I race against big guys who have brands and stuff like that. To me, everyone puts their spin on the way I do it. I train just as hard as they do. It’s only the best to meet each other. “
Lee Wilson believed he had the talent of the time. In the fall, Lee put Wilson on a stopwatch for 45 seconds in a test run and then measured how far Wilson could run in that time. When the clock struck zero, Wilson had run 399.2 meters. Lee double-checked his watch to make sure he hadn’t mistakenly added two seconds.
His experience on the Hayward track helped. At last summer’s under-20 meet, Wilson dropped to fourth place after going full sprint midway through the race, a sign of his excitement at his first major national meet. Lee used the race as a lesson.
“We’re going to come back here and it’s going to be a lot different,” Lee said afterward.
She emphasizes that Lee Wilson was just a kid, a rising junior in high school, dreaming of adolescence. Among academic awards, Wilson won the Bullis Honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award. But it didn’t live up to their expectations. Wilson, the reigning Athlete of the Year, has dreamed of the Olympics since he started running at age 8 and doesn’t want to wait until he’s 20.
“He’s still 16 years old — if I call him a boy, he’ll get upset,” Lee said. “He’s not yet a professional, although mentally he’s right up there with the best of them. He is not afraid when he comes in here. He is not afraid. He believes he is because he is. “We knew this could happen.”
Wilson’s next challenge will be to make sure he can handle the burden of dealing with multiple rounds. He has already sought advice from co-stars Noah Lyles and Grant Holloway on how to maintain his stamina. Lee Wilson had him run a pair of 4×400 legs five hours apart at the Penn Relays this year, in part to prepare him.
“He trains harder than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Lee said. “This is a daily routine for us. Yes, he can do it. I think he got more into it.
“It’s just the first round,” Wilson said. “I hope there will be many more to break this record.”
As one Maryland track star begins to rise, another fades away. Broadneck High alum Matthew Centrowitz, a 2016 Olympic gold medalist, will miss the U.S. Olympic Trials with an injury that has derailed his bid to reach his fourth and final Olympics.
“Unfortunately, I won’t have the fairy-tale ending I was hoping for,” Centrowitz told X-Post.
Centrowitz He said in March that 2024 would be his last year, the last time he would run the 1,500 meters at the Paris Olympics. In recent weeks, two illnesses have stopped him. After competing at the Los Angeles Grand Prix in May, Centrowitz fell ill and missed a week of training. When he returned, he tied the thread of his hand.
Centrowitz tried to recover in time for the start of the trials. He says he has recovered to the point where he can run, but can’t run fast enough to compete.
“The last three weeks have been equally difficult physically and mentally,” Centrowitz said. “Unfortunately, I ran out of time.”
Centrowitz still travels to Eugene to watch the trials and support his old friends. It saw Mu run the 800 in 2:01.73, a low effort in her heat, and breeze into the semifinals in second place. “It was very smooth,” Mu said. “I felt like my first run was back. His legs were a little awake. “
Shortly after Mu finished, Richardson won the 100 meters in her first attempt since 2021, but was disqualified after testing positive for marijuana. She won the world championships last summer and clocked 10.88, the fastest of any qualifier.
The final race of the night won the first Olympian’s Challenge crown. Grant Fisher, the reigning American distance runner, won the 10,000 meters in 27:49.47. Woody Kincaid finished second with Nico Young ahead of Drew Hunter in third. The 26-year-old Hunter, who turned pro at 18, would not have made the Olympics if he had passed Young at the wire, but his fourth-place finish was one of his best ever. Marked by injury.
Elsewhere, 29-year-old Eric Holt, who quit working in an upstate New York psych ward to pursue his Olympic dreams, was fifth in Saturday’s 1,500 semifinal in a fast qualifying heat of 3:35.86. Night rush hour.
Before the meet, Centrowitz ran the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the airport with stalwart Evan Jagger. They remember competing and opposing each other all their days. “He was like, ‘You gotta do it for the old guys,'” Jaeger said, “do it for me.”
Among them, the young Wilson boss is not going to make it easy for them.