Adam Gemili closes on a sub-10 in Barcelona FOTO: DECA Text&Bild http://www.decabild.se/

by Alex Hoad

Teenage Kent sprinter Adam Gemili was crowned World Junior Champion over 100m and smashed the Championship record, as well as his personal best, in Barcelona on Wednesday night.

The 18-year-old Dartford star produced a blistering last 50 metres to outstrip his rivals and claim gold in 10.05secs, four hundredths of a second inside the previous Championship record.

It was also three hundredths better than the 10.08 breakthrough performance Gemili (pictured) produced in Regensburg, Germany, at the start of June which shot him into the headlines.

Gemili was thrilled at the win, saying: "I just told myself to stay relaxed and stay focused. I am not going to lie, I was nervous before the race: it’s a World Junior final, it’s in this stadium in Barcelona, how can you not be nervous? But you need to use your nerves in a good way, try to use them to help you run and I did it.

“I want to thank my mum, my dad, my sister, my coach, my training group and the whole of the GB team, the support they have given me is amazing, especially in the last few days” were Gemili’s first words after posing next to the scoreboard for the customary post-record photographs. “I could hear them all cheering for me on the start line, it really did help.”

“This is a massive stepping stone for the Olympics. If I had only made the final, it would have been a great achievement, to win makes it huge.”

Gemili - who claimed European Junior Championship silver last year - breezed through the heats on Tuesday morning in a time of 10.37 and then cruised through the semi-final earlier on Wednesday with a time of 10.18.

On the same track at the Olympic Stadium where Linford Christie took 100m gold 20 years ago this month, Gemili made light of a less-than-spectacular start to storm to the front and won going away from his rivals with American Aaron Ernest second in 10.17 and Jamaican Odean Skeen taking bronze in 10.28.

Gemili is the fastest man in Britain this year and qualified for a place in Team GB in the 100m and 4x100m with a second-placed finish in the Aviva 2012 Trials in Birmingham last month.

Asked if he could produce a sub-10 time at the Olympic Games, World Champion Gemili replied: “I honestly do not know. I am feeling good and I am running well, I just feel there is a whole lot more to come.”

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