Star sprinter, Daniel Williams of Mackenzie High School turned back the challenge of Omkosie Vancooten to break the National School Cycling, Swimming and Track and Field Championships Boys’ U-18 100m record last evening at the National Track and Field Centre.
In the highlight of Day Four of this year’s Nationals’, Williams stopped the clock in an all-time best of 10.65 seconds for the blue riband event.
Williams easily bettered Vancooten of East Georgetown who clocked 10.99 for second place while Jermaine King of New Amsterdam finished third in 11.18s. The previous record of 10.70s was jointly held by Compton Caesar (2014), Chavez Ageday (2010), Keon Lynch (2011) and Jason Yaw (2013).
Williams, a 400m silver medalist at the World Youth Games earlier this year in Kenya, is more or less running against the clock and will be gunning to rewrite the record books once again when he contests his more favoured events, the 200 and 400m.
His record breaking run was a microcosm of holders, District 10’s sublime athletic effort during the 2017 edition of the meet.
The champs have extended their 14-point lead heading into yesterday. After 53 finals, District 10 has amassed 326 points. They are trailed by District Three (190 points) and District Six on 173.5 points.
Although the champion’s trophy is poised to return to the Mining Town, Murphy Nash, Daniel Melville (East Georgetown), Joanna Archer (West Demerara) and Anfernee Headecker (South Georgetown) were some individual athletes who were outstanding yesterday.
Nash from District 10 erased Jomal Johnson’s 2013 record of 2:04.5s. Nash set a new bar at 2:01.43s
Melville was just off the U-18 800m record after recording a time of 2:00.3s for the two-lap event just 2000ths of a second adrift of Ernesto Thomas’ record (2:00.1s) set in 2013.
Archer (u-18) and Headecker (u-20) also won their 800m events just off record time. The championship which is in its 57th year continues today from 09:00hrs.
