MADRID, Spain – Sprint hur­dler De­vynne Charl­ton of the Ba­hamas is one of 11 ath­letes who se­cured wild card spots for the World In­door Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships from March 1 to 3 in Glas­gow, Scot­land.

This fol­lowed her win in the 60-me­tre hur­dles at the fi­nal World Ath­let­ics In­door Tour Gold meet on Fri­day in the Span­ish city of Madrid.

Charl­ton came with­in one hun­dredths-of-a-sec­ond of equalling her own world in­door 60m hur­dles record, clock­ing 7.68 sec­onds, equalling the third-fastest time in his­to­ry and the meet record.

Ac­cord­ing to World Ath­let­ics, the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body, her wild­card en­try means that the Ba­hamas na­tion­al team may have a third team mem­ber for the women’s sprint hur­dles in Glas­gow. Team se­lec­tion for the World In­door Cham­pi­onships is typ­i­cal­ly capped at two ath­letes for each na­tion in each dis­ci­pline, but the wild­card places en­able a third ath­lete to con­test the events for which they qual­i­fy.

World Ath­let­ics said the fi­nal de­ci­sion on en­ter­ing any in­di­vid­ual ath­lete for the World In­door Cham­pi­onships still rest­ed with the ath­lete’s na­tion­al fed­er­a­tion.

Charl­ton will head to the glob­al show­piece in fine form, and her per­for­mance was a clear sign to her ri­vals that she will be tough to beat next week­end.

“I set my­self all of these goals,” Charl­ton said. “I said I want­ed to win the World In­door Tour and break the world in­door record, and I want to be a world in­door cham­pi­on, so I’m just tick­ing all of the box­es. There’s just one more to go.

“If this is any pre­view to the World In­doors, then I’d say I’m on the right track. I’m hav­ing fun. My coach had been telling me for a while that I’m ca­pa­ble of these things, so to see it all come true is a won­der­ful feel­ing.”

Two-time Eu­ro­pean in­door cham­pi­on Na­dine Viss­er of the Nether­lands had won the first 60m hur­dles heat in 7.79 to equal the meet record, but Charl­ton matched that time to win the sec­ond heat, eas­ing down to­wards the end.

The Ba­hami­an then stamped her class in the fi­nal, and the clock first flashed up with 7.67 when she crossed the fin­ish line, but it was lat­er ad­just­ed.

Viss­er was sec­ond in 7.78, on­ly one-hun­dredths-of-a-sec­ond shy of her per­son­al best, and Pia Skrzysows­ka of Poland was third in 7.83.

CMC