Sev­en­teen-year-old Khal­i­fa St Fort set a new na­tion­al Un­der 18 record to win sil­ver in the Girls 100m sprint at the IAAF World Youth Cham­pi­onships in Cali, Colom­bia on Thurs­day night.

St Fort, who is coached by lo­cal sprint leg­end Ato Boldon, stopped the clock at 11.19 to fin­ish be­hind Amer­i­can Can­dace Hill (11.08) while fel­low US ath­lete Jay­la Kirk­land was third in 11.41. It went down as the eighth fastest Girls Un­der 18 100m time in his­to­ry and marked St Fort's third per­son­al best run in nine hours, fol­low­ing her 11.39 and 11.24 in her heat and semi­fi­nal re­spec­tive­ly.

"A star is born," tweet­ed a proud Boldon fol­low­ing the re­sult. "Broad­cast­ing doesn't feel this good."

St Fort, who was born in the USA to a Trinida­di­an moth­er, be­gan train­ing un­der Boldon in 2014 af­ter, ac­cord­ing to Boldon, be­ing "ig­nored by her high school coach for two and a half years" at the pres­ti­gious St. Thomas Aquinas sprint pro­gramme.

In an in­ter­view ear­li­er this year, he had stat­ed she was a spe­cial tal­ent with a bright fu­ture.

"Un­der­stand this is not what I do–go seek­ing high school ath­letes," Boldon said. "I am busy trav­el­ing the world and broad­cast­ing in my jobs as broad­cast­er and am­bas­sador for the sport, but when I see a young tal­ent be­ing wast­ed, I am com­pelled to get in­volved."

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ephraim Ser­rette was full of praise for the young ath­lete.

"We have been get­ting up­dates from her coach and to have those per­for­mances means her prepa­ra­tion has been very good," he said. "It augers well for the fu­ture of our fe­male sprint team."

In oth­er events, Akan­ni His­lop with­drew from his 200m heat yes­ter­day, hav­ing picked up a ham­string in­jury in the 100m se­mi-fi­nals the day be­fore. With a per­son­al best of 20.91, His­lop was the fourth fastest sprint­er en­tered in the event. His heat was won by Aus­tralian Jack Hale in 21.31.

Mean­while, World 400m Hur­dles cham­pi­on Je­hue Gor­don has with­drawn from the on­go­ing Pan Amer­i­can Games in Toron­to Cana­da on med­ical grounds fol­low­ing a re­quest from his doc­tor and man­age­ment team. Gor­don was not among the T&T ath­let­ics team which de­part­ed from Pi­ar­co at 1:05 am yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease by the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, the 23-year-old is "nurs­ing a mi­nor in­jury and it was felt best to al­low him time to re­cu­per­ate rather than be sub­ject to in­tense com­pe­ti­tion ahead of the up­com­ing IAAF World Cham­pi­onships in Bei­jing."

The re­lease stat­ed that the team's mood re­mained up­beat as the re­main­ing ath­letes looked to build on their suc­cess this year.

"It's dis­ap­point­ing," said Ser­rette. "You would want your best ath­letes to be in top shape in time for in­ter­na­tion­al meets."