Candace Hill, a 16-year-old student still in high school in Atlanta, Georgia, won her personal best – and in doing so, beat a world record at an athletics meet in Seattle, the Brooks PR Invitational, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Hill completed the 100m event in 10.98sec, which is less than the adult women’s record of 11.02s. The teenager’s own earlier personal best time, achieved at the invitational high school race at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in New York, was 11.21sec, which means she shaved nearly half a minute off her own previous time. In a post-race interview, Hill says she knew the race would go well: “I just had a feeling that this race was going to be good. And it was.”
The young highschooler now holds the Youth World Record for the 100m, which was previously held by another American youngster, Kaylin Whitney, who had a time of 11.10.
Hill is now only 0.10 seconds behind the world junior record, on the all time list. She also will be classified in the category until the end of the 2018 season.
The 2015 IAAF Youth World Championships will be held in California this July, and Hill is tipped to be the favourite to win there.
She now holds both World and American 100m youth records.