FAST AS LIGHTNING
Meet the Brit, 15, who’s faster than Bolt and Lyles at the same age, trained by his mum and is smashing world records
Read the interview with the British teenage sensation below
A TEENAGE British sprinter is on course to usurp Usain Bolt as the fastest man on the planet.
It's unusual for someone so young to have already been given a nickname like 'Lightning', but this is no normal kid.
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Enter record breaking Divine 'Lightning' Iheme who, at just 15-years-old is smashing 100 meters sprint barriers within his age group.
Iheme has recorded faster times than world record holder Bolt and current Olympic champion Noah Lyles at the same age.
Last August, at the age of 14, he recorded a monumental time in junior athletics, clocking in at 10.30 seconds across 100 meters.
He was still in Year 9 at the time.
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To put that figure into perspective, Lyles' quickest recorded time at that age was 11.27 seconds, while Bolt managed 10.57.
Iheme's time cleared the previous world record in the age group of 10.51 seconds held by Jamaica's Sachin Dennis.
Even crazier is that Iheme's time of 10.30 seconds would have earned him a third place finish in the British men's 100m championship last year.
Just last month the starlet broke a 23-year-old record, held by USA's J-Mee Samuels, for the 60m indoor sprint recording a time of 6.71 seconds.
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Iheme was born to be an athlete.
Both his mother, Nkiruka, and his father, Innocent, were successful athletes who represented Nigeria at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.
Meet the 14-year-old British sprint prodigy Divine Iheme who is fastest U15 in history and dubbed 'next Noah Lyles'
Coached by his mother, who also runs the PWD Athletics Academy in Oxfordshire, Divine seems to be in good hands.
Speaking in an he said: "She’s tough - really tough - very specific.
“All she says is, ‘Focus on the one main goal’. It was two years ago that I ran my first sub 11 seconds - 10.86 when I was 13 - that was my first big thing. I have just been gradually working and working.”
Mum Nkiruka chimed in: “He loves running so, so much, he doesn’t want to miss his training so, if he doesn’t do his homework, it’s ‘no training’.
"The language we use is, ‘no pain, no gain’ or ‘pain now, play later’. Some children are just in the house playing games.”
Recalling his early ventures into athletics in adverse conditions on school sports days Iheme continued: “I’d always win the 75m dash and the 200m by a big margin.
“I hated the 600m - I remember crying.
“I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do my own events and I want to take this seriously from now on’. Mum didn’t want to push me until I said I wanted to do it."
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Multiple national age-group titles later his efforts reached new levels last August when he shocked the nation at Lee Valley.
Iheme recolleted the experience: “I remember on the day the timer was delayed, I was crouched, waiting. I saw 10.3 and I started screaming and shouting and running around.
"I was really surprised. The commentator started going crazy. It was an amazing experience. I loved it.”
Nkiruka described her experience watching the spectacle with family in Nigeria: “We were jumping up and down - there was a window - and, in the excitement, I banged my head.”
Despite her understandable excitement Nkiruka wants to keep her son grounded: "He’s not in competition with anybody - he is just enjoying his training.
"If something comes, ‘Wow’. If not, ‘OK’. At the moment I don’t want to put pressure on him. He is going to do well.”
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Iheme is a star in the making with the world at his feet. Breaking records has seen his popularity rise amongst his friends at school
He added: "They always say, ‘I can’t believe I’m friends with the world record holder’, it’s really good. They are really happy for me.”
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