Paris (AFP) – Newly crowned Olympic 400 metres men’s champion Quincy Hall may have a set of gold teeth to go along with his medal, but he likes to emphasise how he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The 26-year-old American produced one of the great Olympic performances on Wednesday, coming from the clouds to become the fourth fastest man ever in the event.
Hall — who has been mentored by fellow Kansas native and 2000 Olympic 100m champion Maurice Greene — is certainly not one who follows a conventional route. This is illustrated by where his inspiration for his “grit,” as he calls it, comes from. “Raising dogs and raising animals,” the dog-breeding Hall told Fox4kc.com in July. “You just see the determination the animal has, I just try to keep that same determination cause, can’t outwork a dog,” added Hall, who owns six dogs.
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It was an astonishing performance from a man who only two years ago made the switch from 400m hurdles to the flat. “I was wasting a lot of time on those hurdles man,” he told Fox4kc.com. “Those boys are just as fast, and they can hurdle. I can’t hurdle, I’m not as flexible, I don’t bend like that.” A year later, he won world bronze in Budapest but vowed he would make it a different colour come Paris — and he honoured his pledge.
Appositely for the manner in which he hunted down his rivals one by one, he is a lone wolf as he trains on his own. He has certainly taken an unorthodox route to the top — trying all types of distances including cross country running, and at school meets, entered himself in several events from 200m to 1500m.
Just as much as he challenged himself on the track, he had to meet challenges off it with two of his brothers dying young. He paid tribute to them after winning gold, as he did to his two daughters, Abri, 7, and two-year-old A’lani, the latter he said he would “tickle to death.” That was a rare soft moment post celebration, as he dwelled on his tough past in which he scrimped and saved by doing two jobs to get himself through school.
He needed the money too, as there were no catering facilities at the College of the Sequoias in California, and once again he found similarities between himself and his favourite animal. “You got to get your own food,” he said. “No cafeteria, no study hall, none of that. You can find out how to be a dog by yourself.”
Taking the tough decision to move far away from Kansas also put distance between himself and his rock, mum Iecia Fritz, who raised him on her own, alongside his surviving brother, Milton, and sister, Breanna. “Rewarding, I was a single mother, and just seeing him grow up and to live his dream, that’s been exciting for me,” Fritz told Fox4kc.com. She was in Paris for the moment of glory, even though she admitted she often is so nervous she “has to stand outside.”
However, she realised early on that her son, aged five, had a natural-born talent. “My brother was outside with him and they were racing, him and his older cousins, and he’s the youngest one and he’s running behind my brother,” she said. “My brother turns around and says, ‘Hey, this boy can run!'”
Over two decades later, he translated that promise into the greatest achievement a track and field athlete can aspire to — a natural talent, yes, but driven by the hard times he had along the way. “I don’t give up, man,” he said. “I grit. I grind. I got determination. Anything I can think of that’s going to get me to that line, I think of it. All the hurt. All the pain.”
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