Watts Finishes Third in Voting for 1992 Male Athlete of Year : Track and field: Olympic double gold medalist who set two records in Barcelona follows only Reseda’s Young, Kenya’s Kiptanui.

Quincy Watts, the 1992 Olympic champion in the men’s 400-meter dash, finished third in Track & Field News magazine’s voting for its prestigious 1992 male athlete-of-the-year award.

Watts, a three-time state sprint champion at Taft High, finished behind Kevin Young of Reseda and Moses Kiptanui of Kenya.

Young, a former standout at UCLA, set a world record of 46.78 seconds in winning the 400 intermediate hurdles in the Olympics.

Kiptanui missed the Olympics because of an injury but set world records in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (8 minutes 2.08 seconds) and in the 3,000 meters (7:28.96) after the Games.

Watts, 22, had a productive season, winning the NCAA title for USC, finishing third in the U.S. Olympic trials, and then setting two Olympic records in Barcelona.

Watts set his first Olympic record in his 400-meter semifinal heat with a time of 43.71 seconds. He followed that with a 43.50 in the final, second fastest to the world-record 43.29 run by Butch Reynolds of the United States in 1988.

Additionally, Watts ran the second leg for the U.S. 1,600-meter relay team that set a world record of 2:55.74.

Watts’ split of 43.1 seconds is the fastest in history.

Sergei Bubka of Ukraine (who set three world records in the pole vault in 1992), Carl Lewis of the United States (Olympic gold medalist in the long jump and 400 relay), and Jan Zelezny of what was then Czechoslovakia (Olympic champion in the javelin) finished fourth through sixth in the balloting.

Americans Michael Marsh, the Olympic champion in the 200 meters, and Mike Conley, the Olympic gold medalist in the triple jump, were seventh and eighth.

Olympic champions Dieter Baumann of Germany (5,000 meters) and Linford Christie of Great Britain (100 meters) rounded out the top 10.