Sports
Quincy Wilson gets a humbling taste of the Olympics — but it's just the beginning
SAINT-DENIS, France — For the first time since the spotlight began shining on the phenom from Bullis School in Maryland, Quincy Wilson wasn’t smiling. The infectious charm that made him so beloved these last couple of months was replaced with a stern countenance.
Wilson ran the first leg for the U.S. in the first round of the men’s 4×400 relay in Friday’s early session. Responsible for setting the tone, he ran his lap in 47.27 seconds — seventh-best in the eight-man field. And the kid was not happy about it.
Three weeks ago, after becoming a sensation at the U.S. Olympic trials, Wilson set a new personal best, running the 400 meters in 44.20 seconds at the Holloway Pro Classic in Gainesville, Fla. He wasn’t close to that at Stade de France.
“It was amazing,” Wilson said, his million-watt smile noticeably absent. “Was out there with a great team who was on my side through the whole thing. I wasn’t 100 percent myself, but a team came out here and did it for me.”
When asked about the context of not being 100 percent himself, he politely declined to answer. No excuses.
But he doesn’t need one. Wilson might be the only one disappointed.
The Americans recovered and qualified for the final round. No harm was done. The U.S. can still repeat as champions in the final on Saturday.
Wilson, in all likelihood, will be replaced for the final round. That was surely always the plan since the United States has elite options in the single-lap discipline.
Quincy Hall just won the gold medal in the men’s 400 meters. If he’s healthy and has the legs, he’s a virtual lock. Same with Rai Benjamin, who goes for gold in the men’s 400-meter hurdles in Friday night’s finale. Benjamin is a relay legend who has an Olympic gold (Tokyo) and two World Championship golds in the 4×400 relay.
“Tomorrow is going to be better,” relay teammate Vernon Norwood said. “I guarantee you.”
Wilson’s significance was so much less about his time and so much more about his presence. He made history becoming the youngest male to appear in an Olympics for America.
Norwood said he got so caught up in the moment, watching this 16-year-old make Olympic history, he had to snap himself back into focus for the handoff.
16-year-old Quincy Wilson makes his Olympic debut and becomes the youngest male track & field athlete to compete for the United States at the Olympics. 🇺🇸 #ParisOlympics
📺 USA Network & Peacock pic.twitter.com/XJ4HudX0Dx
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 9, 2024
“I’m super proud of him, to come out here and show his grit for us, for the United States,” Norwood said. He added, “It’s wonderful. I told him before we walked out. I said, ‘Hey, embrace it. You belong here. This is a privilege. Nobody in this world will get this opportunity, so make the most of it.’”
What’s more, these Paris Games have seen USA Track and Field re-established its dominance, and Wilson is one of the marquee prospects for the nation’s bright future in the sport.
Clearly, he was put on this relay team for that reality. The coaches chose to build up Wilson, getting him some valuable experience ahead of Los Angeles 2028, instead of rewarding another runner whose best days are behind him. Wilson is being groomed to be a successful Olympian.
“Absolutely!” women’s hurdler Masai Russell — who also attended Bullis and is close with Wilson — said when asked if she was proud of him. “When he was super sad that he didn’t make the (4×400 mixed) relay I was like, ‘You know, you’re 16. People would die to be in your shoes. … Some people who run track their whole life never made the team. … And I’m glad that he got the opportunity to run just so he could get the feel of this atmosphere. Because it’s pretty intense. So I know when he comes back, it’ll be a completely different story.”
Wilson wasn’t trying to hear any of that in the immediacy of 47.27.
And perhaps that’s the best thing to come out of his Olympic debut. The young fella wasn’t appeased by merely being here. If he needed any more motivation, he got it by being humbled on the Olympic stage.
“He’s a competitor,” Russell said. “Men are just competitive in general. But he is super competitive. Like we were playing (air) hockey together, and I was like, ‘Oh. … He don’t play no games.’ … I lost by, like, five.”
You just know Wilson — with his entire family in the crowd and his whole world in Maryland watching — had designs on doing something special in his first-ever Olympic appearance. He’s been watching everyone else compete, make history, waiting for a chance to do so himself. He seems to do so every time he steps on the track. He’s already set three under-18 records this season.
After he made American track & field history, 16-year-old Quincy Wilson’s competitors showed him love after the race. ❤️ #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/lXfg0jJYnd
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 9, 2024
But for the first time since the larger sports world learned the name Quincy Wilson, he looked like a 16-year-old on the track running against grown men.
He shot out of the blocks in Lane 4 and held his ground through the first 200 meters. But it looked as if he went too hard, perhaps governed by the adrenaline and excitement of a debut on the biggest stage of his life.
The youngster started to die out on the second turn and was struggling down the backstretch. The strength and experience he still needs was evident as he was sixth heading into the final stretch. Fatigue had his form out of whack as Poland’s 20-year-old Maksymilian Szwed passed Wilson easily. The only runner with a worse time in the heat was Renny Quow of Trinidad and Tobago.
Making matters worse, Botswana made a switch and put Letsile Tebogo, the new 200-meter champion, in the first leg. He ran blazing fast, smoking the field to give his nation the lead and speeding up the pace in the process.
Wilson gave it all he had, though. Exhausted, and no doubt embarrassed, he nearly came to a complete stop before handing off the baton.
Fortunately for the U.S., Wilson had some grown men behind him. And a crowd pulling for him.
“They got me around the track today,” he said. “My grit and determination got me around the track. I knew I had a great three legs behind me, and I knew it wasn’t just myself today. If it was just myself, we’d be in last place.”
Norwood immediately made up ground with a monster second leg, gradually getting faster and getting America up with the rest of the pack. His 43.54 seconds was the fastest of any leg in the first round, edging out Great Britain’s star quarter-miler, Matthew Hudson-Smith, who ran 43.87. They were the only two under 44 seconds.
Then Bryce Deadmon took the baton from Norwood and surged America two spots to fourth after the first turn. Deadmon posted the fastest third leg and got the U.S. on the heels of third place. Anchor Christopher Bailey still had work to do.
“It’s just going to be motivation for me,” Quincy Wilson said of his Olympic debut, “to give my team a better chance than what they had today.” (Hannah Peters / Getty Images)
With America back in the mix, and Botswana way out front, Bailey was patient at first. Then with about 150 meters remaining, he turned it on and passed up Japan to secure the No. 3 spot and America’s automatic qualifier in the final round.
“That was the plan,” Norwood said. “We put him out front. We didn’t want to give him too much responsibility. So it was my job to pick up as much as I can.”
Wilson’s best hope to stick for the final was to do something special. His frustration from not coming close to it was visceral. His Olympic debut about two to three seconds too long and yet over so fast.
Someday, he’ll benefit from the lessons he learned at Stade de France on Friday. He’ll see this experience as integral to the Olympian he becomes. He might even come away with a medal, as preliminary runners are also rewarded, not just the four in the final.
But in the moment, Wilson looked much more angry than appreciative. What’s inside him, which got him to this grand stage, won’t allow him to so easily set aside his performance. Which explains why he feels like a lock to be back on this stage again.
“It’s just going to be motivation for me,” Wilson said, “to give my team a better chance than what they had today.”
GO DEEPER
For Quincy Wilson, teenage track prodigy, everything’s different now — Olympics or not
(Top photo of Quincy Wilson running in Friday’s 4×400-meter relay: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Sports
Commentary: ‘I don’t want any handouts.’ Amid the Angels’ drought, a starry homecoming for Mike Trout
Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.
Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.
Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.
That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.
Not even at home?
“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”
Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.
“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.
“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”
His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.
In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.
“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.
“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”
For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.
Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.
“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”
Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.
“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.
“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”
Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.
“It’s like win or die.”
It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.
No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)
Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.
“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”
Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.
He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.
Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.
“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.
“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”
At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.
“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.
“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”
So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
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Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, OUSMANE DEMBÉLÉ FIRE FRANCE INTO WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS WITH WIN OVER MOROCCO
It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
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Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
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