IN THIS month of celebration, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey is not sure what to expect this morning. Yesterday he brightened the horizon of British sprinting by becoming world junior 100 metres champion here and, on Tuesday week, he turns 18. Today, though, is A-level results day. “August is my lucky month, so hopefully I will just scrape through,” he said.
There was no question of Aikines-Aryeetey just scraping through here. He won his gold medal on merit. Against the world’s fastest teenagers there was none so calm, so prepared, so determined. With a maturity beyond his years, he left his mark in this city where the 2008 Olympic Games will be held and where he hopes to gain the experience that will lead to glory at London 2012.
To achieve that ambition Aikines-Aryeetey will need to avoid the pitfalls that have prevented Christian Malcolm and Mark Lewis-Francis, the only Britons before him to have won this title, from fulfilling their potential. But the young man’s ambition is summed up by Matt Favier, his coach, who said: “There is nothing impossible for him.”
Such as winning here when six of the finalists had quicker personal best times than his. Such as overcoming the “disappointment” — his word — at hearing that Justin Gatlin, with whom he had trained in April, had failed a drugs test. Such as carrying such weight of expectation that, even in his triumph, Dave Collins, the national performance director, urged caution. “The real worry is piling too much on young shoulders,” Collins said.
The athlete, though, seems to relish it. He has revelled in the attention since he caught the eye with his 100 and 200 metres double at the World Youth Championships in Marrakesh last year. No matter how apparently daunting the occasion, Aikines-Aryeetey takes control with his beaming smile and endless chatter.
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So comfortable did he feel in a glitzy Monte Carlo hotel last year, when he was awarded the IAAF’s rising star award, that he became pals with Gatlin, the world and Olympic 100 metres champion. It led to an invitation to North Carolina to join Gatlin in training and to the upset three weeks ago of hearing that the American had been charged with a doping offence.
Connections have been severed. “I have tried not to think about it,” Aikines-Aryeetey said. He is more concerned about his A-level results in sociology and PE, which he hopes will earn him a place at Brunel University, and, so far as last night went, reminding us that he likes to be known as the Candyfloss Kid.
It seems that the sweet tooth that Favier complains about is still with his charge. “The Haribos came in handy — I saved one packet for today and the Candyfloss Kid won,” Aikines-Aryeetey said.
So perky a character is he that, even as one of the youngest members of the Great Britain squad here for the World Junior Championships, he is admired by all. “He is looked up to by the team and he handles it really well,” Martin Rush, the team leader, said. “And I think that the fact he is so happy-go-lucky helps him in the way that he handles the pressure.”
The pressure last night included a false start in the final by Obinna Metu, from Nigeria, which meant disqualification for any athlete jumping the gun subsequently.
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Yet the young Briton, showing nerves of steel, was the quickest out of the blocks and was never headed, pulling away in the last 20 metres to win in 10.37sec, which would have placed him seventh in the senior European Championships in Gothenburg last week. Justyn Warner, from Canada, took the silver medal in 10.39 and Yohan Blake, from Jamaica, the bronze in 10.42.
If it was a result that defied the rankings, it did not surprise Favier. “You have to deliver on the track or we might as well all become accountants and award the medals that way,” Favier said. “Harry enjoys the pressure and he has growing confidence that he can deliver when it is really on.”