When LA runway stars Quincy Watts and Kevin Young set the gold standard 30 years ago

The following is an excerpt from a story about Quincy Watts and Kevin Young, their Los Angeles roots, and their rise to athletics fame 30 years ago.

If it had been Olympic champion and former world record holder Kevin Young, he would have spent the night of August 6 relaxing with his wife, Marion Laeuppi, and three teenage stepchildren at an Airbnb in Inglewood they owned. recently rented.

But thanks to Marion and a friend, the evening was an intimate celebration of a magical moment 30 years ago this month, when he and two other City of Los Angeles chapter alumni stood atop of the world of athletics.

Three decades ago, Young became the first man to beat 47 seconds in the men’s intermediate 400 meters hurdles at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona in a world record time that would stand for nearly 29 years.

“I was ready to let the day go by without much thought,” said Young, a UCLA graduate who now lives in a village outside of Zurich, Switzerland. “But I’m glad it went well. It was the first time Q and I did something together as far as Barcelona is concerned.

Q is Quincy Watts, now director of men’s and women’s athletics and women’s cross country at USC, his alma mater. In Barcelona, ​​Watts set two Olympic records in the men’s 400 meters, capped by a career best that was the second-fastest performance in history.

Young and Watts had not seen each other for several years until Watts gave Young and his children a tour of the USC facilities days before the surprise party at the rental house.

Steve Lewis, the 1988 Olympic champion in the 400m who placed second to Watts in 1992, and Johnny Gray, the 1992 bronze medalist in the 800m, were the first guests to arrive.

Next came Derek Knight, a college teammate of Young who helped Marion throw the party, and John Carlos, the 1968 Olympic bronze medalist in the 200m and the man who will forever be remembered – with the gold medalist. Tommie Smith – for raising a fist while wearing black gloves at the Mexico City awards ceremony to protest racism against black Americans in the United States

Then came Eugene Driver, a former master sprinter, Jeff Williams, bronze medalist in the 200m at the 1995 World Championships, and Watts, who won a second gold medal at the 1992 Games by running a torrid second leg in the relay 1 600 m to help the United States to a then world record.

“We talked about a lot of things and told a lot of stories,” Young said. “As the wine poured, the conversations started to get longer and louder.”

The story of how Young, Watts and their coach, John Smith – all three City Section products – achieved Olympic greatness does not follow a straight line.

Young grew up playing basketball at a playground in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles.

As the youngest of seven children, he credits a ‘sixth sense’ he had for avoiding trouble that engulfed some children around him, including an older sister, Carmen, who died in 1990 after being addicted to PCP for many years.

Young had a strong track career at Los Angeles Jordan High School, finishing third in the 110-meter hurdles at the state championships as a senior in 1984. Without a scholarship, he joined the UCLA team and changed of ordeal for fear of being Cut.

“I took the middle hurdles seriously in sophomore year because we had a lot of good top runners and I wanted to be on the team,” Young said.

After a second-place finish at the NCAA championships that year, Young won titles in 1987 and 1988 and placed fourth at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Ranked among the top six in the world by Track & Field News from 1987 to 1991, he was undefeated in 1992 when he entered the Olympics.

Meanwhile, Watts, an avid basketball player, had never raced on the track before his mother in Detroit sent the eighth-grader to live with his father in the San Fernando Valley. He would win three state titles – and finish second twice – during his career at Woodland Hills Taft High.

He missed much of his senior season with a strained right hamstring, and injuries slowed him down at USC during the first part of his junior track season. Being sidelined even sent him off to play football as he sought camaraderie.

“Athletics is a team sport, but when you’re injured on the sidelines, you feel alone,” he said. “It’s quite lonely and frustrating when you’re injured, year after year.”

Hamstring issues led Watts to focus on the 400 as a junior and he placed second at the 1991 NCAA Championships before winning the 1992 title and finishing third at the Olympic Trials.

Watts’ quest for a gold medal in Barcelona began with a victory in his first-round qualifying round. But he felt “out of rhythm” finishing second in his quarter-final in 45.06.

Smith, who first coached Young at UCLA and began working with Watts in the summer of 1991, accused Watts’ sunglasses of slipping when he came off the blocks.

After the race, Smith asked for the sunglasses, which he threw away and crushed. Then he told Watts to send a message by dominating his semi-final, and he did: his time of 43.71 lowered the Olympic record of 43.86 set by American Lee Evans in 1968 and was the second fastest in history despite slowing down over the past 20-25. meters of the race.

Two days later, in the 400m final, Watts trailed the first corner behind former UCLA star Lewis, but made up ground on the backstretch to gain a four-to-one advantage. five meters on his closest pursuer immediately entering the house.

“I knew I had won the race coming out of the corner, but I wasn’t going to take any chances,” Watts said. “With about 50 meters to go. . . I went to muscle him. I wanted to give it everything I had and my form kind of went out the window. I dropped everything because I had the great Steve Lewis in the running and I wasn’t going to look back.

Watts’ time of 43.50 was second only to American Butch Reynolds’ world record of 43.29 from 1988, and his margin of victory over Lewis (44.21) was the largest at the Olympics since 1924 .

The victory was a wonderful gift for Smith in his 42nd birthday, and Young gave him “something even better” the next night in the intermediate hurdles final.

Jamaican Winthrop Graham and Frenchman Stéphane Diagana cleared the first or two of 10 barrier flights. But Young was clearly ahead after the fifth hurdle and was so far ahead towards the end of the straight that he raised his right arm in triumph eight yards from the finish line.

His time of 46.78 broke American Edwin Moses’ world record of 47.02 from 1983 and left him well ahead of Graham in second place (47.66).

“I was super, super happy,” Young said. “I felt like I had accomplished a lot coming from where I came from. Growing up in Watts, having been an extra at UCLA, having taken the middle hurdles at UCLA because I wanted to make sure I was part of it. of the team.

Although Watts would help the United States set a world record of 2:55.74 in the 1,600m relay in Barcelona, ​​he and Young would forever be linked by their winning performances in the 400m and intermediate hurdles.

Young won the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany in 1993 and Watts ran a stage in a 1,600 relay team that set a still-standing world record of 2:54.29 in that competition. But they parted ways with Smith after the 1993 season and their performance declined thereafter.

Smith, a 1968 graduate of Los Angeles Fremont High and the No. 1 ranked quarter-mile in the world in 1971 as a UCLA junior, has coached a host of elite sprinters. But he doesn’t worry about what might have been.

“I look back on what we have accomplished together. I mean, Quincy set a pair of Olympic records in the 400m and won two gold medals. And Kevin won a gold medal and ran a time that was the world record until last year. We were all proud of what we were doing.

John Ortega is a former Los Angeles Times sportswriter who now writes Track & Field Informed (TFI) with Johnny O at trackandfield.substack.com.