Offseason Episode 5: Olympic Champion Quincy Watts

Send us Fan MailThe Heisman Trophy Podcast's off-season search for the origins of elite athleticism continues with Quincy Watts, who won two gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and now directs the track and field program at USC.Watts grew up in Detroit, a basketball player who happened to be fast. He traces the spark to the 1984 Olympics, when he watched Carl Lewis win four golds, pointed at the television, and told his father he would win one too. The road there was not straight. He resisted the 400 meters — "the pain business," he calls it — long enough to try out for USC football, and he lost three early seasons to hamstring injuries before deciding, his senior year, to choose excellence over comfort every single day.He won that gold in an Olympic-record 43.50, then added a second in the 4×400 relay. Host Chris Huston walks him through the final itself: the meditation in the staging area, the moment time seemed to slow on the backstretch, and finding his father in the stands at the line.Watts also talks coaching — reading the difference between a Michael Norman and a Rai Benjamin, "two Ferraris built different" — and gives a blunt answer to the question at the heart of the series: what separates an elite athlete from a merely very good one.Support the showThe Heisman Hopefules Podcast streams every Thursday during the college football season and is hosted by Chris Huston. The pod is available on all streaming networks, including Spotify and Apple Music, and full videos of the show are available on YouTube, with clips on TikTok and Instagram.Email us at [email protected] for feedback and inquiries.