In 10.6 seconds, fifteen year-old Tevin Garraway validated his reputation as the country’s most impressive youth athlete at the South American Youth/Under 23 Championship Trials on Saturday at the Police Sports Club ground Eve Leary.
Garraway outclassed the field of under 17 competitors to complete an impressive victory in the boys 100m which he won. Mark Scott, technical delegatefor the two-day meet which ended yesterday, informed this newspaper that the standards set by the Athletics Association of Guyana (AAG) for the boy’s 100m was 10.7s. The standards were based on the third place time at the last edition of the South American Youth Championships.
Garraway raced out of blocks, smoothly executed all his race phases and completed a performance which is most likely impressive enough to book his ticket for the South American Championship which will be held in Argentina October 12 -14. The Leonora Secondary school student said that he was both pleased and surprised by his performance and credited his coach Lyndon Wilson for helping him to put together the quality race.
“I feel that it was a very good performance because since my coach went to the Olympics and came back he taught me a lot about how to come out of the blocks and how to run fast and still keep my form so I tried to put all that in practice and it worked,” Garraway said.
Garraway said that he felt very accomplished having finally been able to lower his time after consistently running 10.8 or slower in recent races, which made him feel as though he had been plateauing. Assessing his performance after the race, Garraway said that he feels that he can lower his time even further, which he feels is necessary to achieve his next goal.
“Well making the team was my first goal and my next is to medal at South American Youth. Not just medal though, I want to win and I know I have some more time to train harder and improve to like 10.5, 10.4 which I know will get me in the top three,” Garraway said.
Garraway said that his performance has also boosted his confidence for the 200m race today, where he hopes to clock 21.5 seconds, to surpass the standard required (22.0s).
