Divine Iheme's Response When Told he'd Beaten Record Set by Noah Lyles as a Teenager
British sprinting superstar Divine Iheme kept it respectful when he was told that he'd beaten Olympic champion Noah Lyles times.
Ever since Olympic legend Usain Bolt announces his retirement back in 2017, fans have been looking for the next person to step up and dominate sprinting in a similar fashion.
Since then, several names have taken on the mantle of the fastest man on the planet, including the popular Lyles, who recently won gold in the 200m at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
The American has often been compared to Bolt throughout his career, something that he is more than aware of and welcomes as he attempts to break Bolt's long-standing records.
Advert
But in a few years time we could all be talking about Iheme, the young Brit currently running even faster than Lyles or Bolt.
In August last year the 14-year-old sprinter, who is from Radley in Oxfordshire, made headlines after he ran 100 metres in a just 10.30 seconds.
To put that into perspective, that is nearly a second faster than the time that Lyles, the current 100m Olympic gold champion, ran just 10 days before his 15th birthday.
Back in 2012, the American crossed the 100m line in 11.27 seconds, a total of 0.97 seconds slower than Iheme's time last year.
But while speaking about his impressive time on Sky Sports, the young Brit decided not to follow Lyles infamous showboating and instead paid tribute to the American.
He said: "Noah is a great athlete and he has given me a lot of confidence to pursue this career, run quicker and get better time. He gives me the confidence to break more and more barriers as I go through my journey."
Iheme's time of 10.30 seconds would have placed him third in the men's 100m at the British Athletics Championship in 2024, and would even have been quick enough to reach an Olympic final as recently as 1996.
Although he has a long way to go yet before he can start challenging the likes of Lyles and Bolt, who had a PB of 10.57 seconds as a 14-year-old, it's safe to say that he's well on his way to becoming a sprinting great.
Usain Bolt sends warning to Divine Iheme about future career
Like Iheme, Bolt quickly established himself as a potential legend in sprining at a very young age, something that he has since admitted made it harder for him to adjust to competing as he got older, something that Iheme would be wise to consider.
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast with Jake Humphrey last year, Bolt confessed: "When I started out, I didn't understand the concept of 'being great' because I was young.
"I was 15 when I won the world juniors, I was really young and I was really talented so I didn't have to work as hard as it was just talent, as I was winning and winning."
Bolt continued: "I remember when I got to the professional level, and I felt like it was just going to be easy.
"And I got to the stage where I would go to meets and I would lose. And I was like, 'This is strange, this is new'. So it took me a while to understand."
Topics: Athletics, Noah Lyles, Usain Bolt, Olympics
Ben McCrum