A sprinting phenom and standout student at Bliss, Wilson was already poised to become a future star in American track and field — a future that came suddenly on Friday night, when Wilson, with “Bliss” emblazoned across the front of his uniform, ran the 400 meters in 44.66 seconds, breaking the under-18 world record and the American record that had been held by Darrell Robinson for 42 years.
Wilson headed to the starting line wearing a Maryland state flag racing singlet designed by New Balance. He had never beaten 45.13 seconds before, but he was familiar with the under-18 world record of 44.84 seconds, set five years ago by Justin Robinson.
“I've seen it all season,” Wilson said.
Wilson's time beat the U.S. high school record by 0.03 seconds and gave him an easy qualifying run and made him the second-fastest competitor in Sunday's 400-meter semifinals. The top three finishers in Monday's final will earn a ticket to Paris. With the field vacated by world champion Michael Norman, Wilson declared himself a real threat.
“We knew he was going to be fast,” said Chris Bailey, who qualified third. “He that “Fast. And I give him credit. What he's done all year is great.”
The fans at Hayward Field were taking notice of Wilson's precocious performance, and he received the loudest cheers when his name was announced at the starting line. Wilson took center stage on a night that also saw Asing Mew make his season debut after rehabbing a hamstring injury, Shakyari Richardson vying to make his first Olympic team and Oregon's Ryan Crowther come within one throw of qualifying for the shot put final.
“It's a different game,” Wilson said. “I'm not running a high school anymore. I'm running it with some big names.”
Wilson remains youthful — he has barely any hair and his smile — “a million-dollar smile,” his coach, Joe Lee, said — makes him look younger than his 16 years. But on the track, Wilson never blinked. He waved to the crowd as he crossed the finish line, and the cheers got even louder when the scoreboard showed his crackling time.
“Probably a two,” Wilson said, describing his level of nervousness on a scale of 1 to 10. “I'm competing against bigger guys with designer gear. From my perspective, they're all wearing cleats just like me. I'm working just as hard as them. It's just the best guys competing against each other.”
Lee believed Wilson could achieve that time. In the fall, Lee had Wilson do a test run, setting a stopwatch for 45 seconds to see how far Wilson could run in that time. When the clock hit zero, Wilson had run 399.2 meters. Lee checked the watch again to make sure he hadn't accidentally added a few seconds.
Hayward's track experience helped: At an under-20 meet here last summer, Wilson dropped to fourth place after sprinting midway through the race, a sign he'd gotten too excited in his first major national meet. Lee took the race as a lesson.
“We're going to be back here,” Lee said at the time, “and things are going to be very different.”
Lee emphasized that Wilson is still a kid, a high school senior, just entering adolescence. For academic awards, Wilson received the Bliss Award, a “Joy of Life” award. But he didn't disappoint. Wilson, who was named All-Met Athlete of the Year this winter and spring, has been dreaming of the Olympics since he started running track at age 8, and he's not going to wait until he's 20 to do so.
“He's still a 16-year-old young man. He'd get mad if I called him a boy,” Lee said. “He's not a professional yet, but mentally he's up there with the best. He's not scared when he comes here. He's not intimidated. He believes he belongs here, because he is here. We knew this was possible.”
Wilson's next challenge will be to prove he can withstand the pressure of a multi-round meet, and he's already turned to stars Noah Lyles and Grant Holloway for advice on how to maintain his stamina. As part of Wilson's preparation, Coach Lee had Wilson run the 4×400 relay twice at five-hour intervals at this year's Pennsylvania Relays.
“He practices harder than anybody I've ever seen,” Lee said. “It's an everyday thing for us. Yes, he can do it. I think he still has potential.”
“It's just the first round,” Wilson said. “Hopefully there will be more records to break this one.”
While one Maryland track star was on the rise, another met a tragic end: Matthew Centrowitz, the Broadneck High School graduate who won a gold medal at the 2016 Olympics, was forced to withdraw from the U.S. Olympic Trials with a hamstring injury, missing out on a fourth and final Olympic appearance.
“Unfortunately, it won't be the fairy tale ending I was hoping for,” Centrowitz said in the X post.
Centrowitz declared in March that 2024 would be his final year and was set to compete in the 1,500m at the Paris Olympics. But two illnesses have derailed his plans in recent weeks. After competing in the Los Angeles Grand Prix in May, Centrowitz fell ill and missed a week of training. After returning, he injured his hamstring.
Centrowitz tried to recover in time for the start of the trials, and said he felt well enough to jog but not at a competitive pace.
“The last three weeks have been tough, both physically and mentally, to maintain optimism that I could still compete,” Centrowitz said. “Unfortunately, time just wasn't enough.”
Centrowitz still made the trip to Eugene to watch the heats and cheer on his old friend. He was there to see Mu run the 800 in 2:01.73 and comfortably take second place in the semifinals. “It went so smoothly,” Mu said. “It felt like my first race back. My legs were waking up a little bit.”
Shortly after Mu finished, Richardson competed at the trials for the first time since 2021, when she won the 100 meters but was disqualified after testing positive for marijuana. She won at last summer's world championships, clocking a time of 10.88 seconds, the fastest of any qualifier.
The final race of the night determined the Trials' first Olympian. American distance running mainstay Grant Fisher won the 10,000 meters in 27:49.47. Woody Kincaid was close behind in second, and Nico Young edged out Drew Hunter for third. Hunter, a 26-year-old All-Met selection at Loudoun Valley High School who turned pro at age 18, probably wouldn't have made the Olympics if he'd passed Young at the finish line, but his fourth-place finish was one of the best in an injury-plagued career.
Meanwhile, Eric Holt, 29, who quit his job working in a psychiatric ward in upstate New York to pursue his Olympic dreams, clocked a fast-paced heat of 3 minutes 35.86 seconds, the fifth-fastest time of the night, to advance to Saturday's 1,500-meter semifinals.
Before the meet, Centrowitz ran into veteran 3,000-meter hurdles runner Evan Yeager at the airport, and the two reminisced about their days competing against each other. “He said, 'Do your best for the older guys,'” Yeager says. “'Do it for me, too.'”
With Wilson and the other young players, they won't be easy to beat.
