PARIS: Sixteen-year-old American Candace Hill has scorched to a 10.98 seconds time in the 100m, the fastest ever for a female athlete of her age.
With a very favourable, but legal, tailwind of +2.0 metres per second, Hill’s performance at Shoreline, Washington state, ensured she became the first 16 or 17 year-old female (currently born in 1998 or 1999) to dip under the mythical 11-second barrier.
Hill, born on February 11, 1999, had already set tongues wagging when she clocked 11.21sec into a headwind in a race for juniors on the undercard of last week’s New York Diamond League meet.
The previous best time for the high school student’s age category was 11.10sec set by American Kaylin Whitney, born in 1998, in July 2014 in Eugene.
Hill’s astonishing 10.98sec makes her the 10th fastest female sprinter of the season so far, in all categories. It would have seen her finish seventh in the 2012 London Olympics.
Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Olympic and world champion, has the season’s current best of 10.81sec, while late American Florence Griffiths-Joyner set the world record of 10.49sec in 1988. — AFP