Athletics: Under 10 seconds? Don't rush me, says the fastest teenager since Carl Lewis

From the moment the train pulls into New Street Station the posters hit you. Ten feet off the ground and 10 feet high, they seem to be everywhere in Birmingham. "Have you got 10 seconds to witness sporting history?" they enquire, with the face of Mark Lewis-Francis glaring down at you. There's even one on display in the room behind us at the Alexander Stadium.

Mark Lewis-Francis, sitting in the back row of the main stand, breaks into a fit of laughter at the very mention of them. "Oh, man!" he says, simultaneously tickled and embarrassed by the huge billing he has been getting at the small age of 19.

As it happened, it took the teenager a little over 10 seconds to create sporting history at the Alexander Stadium last weekend. It took him 10.06sec to become the youngest-ever winner of the AAA Championships 100m title. Linford Christie was 26 when he won it for the first time; Allan Wells was 28; Harold Abrahams was 25. And they are the sacred trinity of British speed merchants who have won the blue riband of sprinting, the Olympic 100m crown.

Maurice Greene, the current Olympic champion, world champion and world-record holder at the distance, was 22 before he could run as quickly as the personal best Lewis-Francis recorded behind him in Paris a fortnight ago, 10.04sec. The American's best time at the age of 19 was 10.43sec. Only one runner, in fact, has ever been faster as a teenager. This comes as a surprise to Lewis-Francis – so much so, he diverts his gaze from the track where he trains as a member of the Birmingham club Birchfield Harriers.

Carl Lewis was two months short of his 20th birthday when he clocked 10.00sec at a meeting in Dallas in May 1981. "Ten dead?" Lewis-Francis queries. "Ten-oh-oh?... Aah! I had no idea of that, man... Before his 20th, yeah?" The Billy Whizz kid from the West Midlands, the boy with the double-barrelled name and the shotgun blast of natural speed, has clearly been under the impression that he was the fastest-ever kid out of the blocks. Still, the disappointment fails to linger.

"That's Carl Lewis, though, innit?" he says. "I look up to Carl Lewis. He came to be a legend at the end of the day. He was capable of doing a lot of things: long jump, 100m, 200m." It comes as something of a surprise to learn that Lewis-Francis knows so much about Lewis. He was, after all, only eight when the American won his last major 100m title, at the World Championships in Tokyo in 1991.

He laughs heartily again at this observation. "Carl Lewis... Linford Christie... Donovan Bailey," he says, reeling back through his historical sprinting knowledge. "Anyone before that – except Jesse Owens – I don't know about."

Lewis-Francis still has two months left to catch up with the teenage time of the single-barrelled Lewis. His 20th birthday is on 4 September. Judging by his burgeoning form this summer, he could well be pushed inside the 10-second barrier in the heat of major championship battle at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester at the end of this week and at the European Championships in Munich two weeks hence.

He has achieved the feat twice already, though when he recorded 9.97sec in the quarter-finals at the World Championships in Edmonton last summer his time was declared invalid because the trackside wind gauge was not working, and when he registered the same time at the Norwich Union Classic in Sheffield last month the following wind was 0.7m per second above the "legal" limit at 2.7m per second. Carl Lewis's best wind-assisted time at the age of 19 was 9.99sec.

The very fact that the young Lewis-Francis is being compared on a par with the young Lewis is a measure of just how awesome his ability happens to be. It is fair to say that the true scale of his talent is not as greatly appreciated on these shores as it might be were he, say, from across The Pond. There is no air of intrigue or mystery about the lad from Darlaston, in the middle of the Black Country triangle of Walsall, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, who can be found picking a high-speed path past the schoolkids and club runners in the crowded home straight at the Alexander Stadium four nights a week, coaxed by his long-time coach, Steve Platt, who works by day as a motor engineer at GKN in Aldridge.

There are no airs or graces about him either. The thought that one day he might achieve as much as a fully-grown 100m man as Carl Lewis did – world and Olympic champion and world-record breaker – neither boggles his youthful mind nor inflates his ego. "Not at all, not at all," he says. "I'm at an early stage. I might be running quick now but when I get to, like, 26 or 27 I could be running slow. Who knows? I'm just taking it all in my stride, taking it day by day, bit by bit. There's no rush for nothing.

"A lot of people rush themselves and want it all too soon, get titles way too soon and this and that. I'm only 19. I've got another 10, 15 years in this sport. I'm just going to live every one of them years to the fullest I can, to the fullest potential I can, and still enjoy the sport for what it is.

"At the end of the day I'm just doing what I enjoy doing. I'm here to run and that's it. I'm just enjoying it. I don't reckon I'm anywhere yet. Being the fastest in my age group, being the fastest teenager... that's all irrelevant really. I've got to start from scratch as a senior, keep my feet on the floor and keep going at it. I've still got a long way to go. I've not won any major titles yet at senior level."

It was only this summer that Lewis-Francis officially became a senior athlete, but he already has two international medals: a 60m bronze from the World Indoor Championships in Lisbon last year and a 60m silver from the European Indoor Championships in Vienna in February this year. He also has a European Cup 100m win to his name, from Bremen last summer – plus a victory against Maurice Greene from that windy race in Sheffield three weeks ago.

It was not the first time he had made an impression on the world's fastest man. Greene was at trackside at Crystal Palace in August of 2000 when Lewis-Francis won the B race in the British Grand Prix meeting in 10.10sec, 0.06sec faster than Bruny Surin's winning time in the main race. "Is he really only 17?" the stunned Greene said after asking who the new "find" was.

At 17, Lewis-Francis turned down the chance to race Greene and Surin at the Sydney Olympics. He concentrated on winning the world junior title in Santiago instead. The following spring his growing maturity was evident when he stood on the start line for the 60m final at the World Indoor Championships. Precisely at the moment he needed to keep his mind clear from pressure to focus on the task at hand, he heard the stadium announcer giving him the big build-up, pondering whether he could finish among the medals and break the world junior record. He responded in ice-cool fashion, taking the bronze behind Tim Harden and Tim Montgomery of the USA in 6.51sec, a world junior record.

It was a similar story at the European Indoor Championships five months ago. Lewis-Francis's arrival in Vienna coincided with the news that a warrant had been issued for his arrest after his failure to report at Wolverhampton Crown Court the same day to answer charges of driving with a provisional licence. After three days of adverse headlines and hassle, not least for his mother, Hermine, in Darlaston, he won the silver medal behind Jason Gardener and then fronted up to the travelling British press corps.

"Give me my dues," he pleaded. "Don't treat me like a villain. The way the press have gone on about it you would have thought I had done something massive. All right, I drove with a provisional licence, but I'm not the first person to do it. And if I'd known I'd had to be in court I would have come out here a day later."

On his return to Britain, the silver-medal winner was arrested at Birmingham Inter-national Airport, locked in a cell overnight and fined in court the following day. He had committed an offence, to which he had immediately pleaded guilty by post, but anyone who has got to know Lewis-Francis will tell you he is as genuinely affable a young man as you could wish to meet. That he has his feet planted so firmly on the floor and his head screwed so securely on to his shoulders bears testimony to that – and to the steadying influence of his mother, with whom he still lives, and of his coach, his club and his manager, James Hunt.

His criticism of his sprint rival Dwain Chambers after being informed that the British No 1 had withdrawn from the 100m at the AAA Championships was simply an honest knee-jerk reaction of disappointment. Having finished 0.04sec behind Chambers at the Commonwealth Games trials and then 0.02sec behind him at Sheffield, Lewis-Francis had been relishing the chance of a crack at him on his home track. Away from the rivalry on the track that promises to produce one of the races of the Commonwealth Games, and of the European Championships, the pair enjoy a refreshingly happy relationship.

"Yeah, definitely," Lewis-Francis says. "At the end of the day Dwain just wants to be the same thing that I want, and that's to be Britain's No 1 sprinter. That's the only rivalry we've got. I don't see there's no extras. I've got nothing against Dwain, and he don't hate me... Well, hopefully he don't hate me, anyway.

"I'm getting closer to him. Last year I was, like, ten-hundredths of a second away. Now it's just a couple of hundredths of a second. Every race that I race against him I feel like I'm getting closer and closer."

It is likely to be close again in Man-chester on Saturday night, when the Commonwealth title will be on the line. Whatever the outcome in the City of Manchester Stadium, though, the chances are that the 24-year-old Chambers will have to maintain his own improvement if he is to keep ahead of his 19-year-old rival.

The shrewdness with which Platt has guided Lewis-Francis – increasing his training load in small, calculated increments each year, without ever losing sight of the long-term big picture – means there is still scope for further development. Watch him blast down the 100m stretch, an unstoppable bundle of pace and power, leaving some of the world's best sprinters in his wake, and it is difficult to remind yourself that the Billy Whizz kid is still just that: a growing kid.

Lewis-Francis is two inches taller now than he was last year. He is walking taller and running taller by the week. And if you have 10 seconds to spare on Saturday night you might just see him create sporting history – as the first teenager to break through the 10-second barrier.

Biography: Mark Lewis-Francis

Born: 4 September 1982, Smethwick, Birmingham.

Education: George Salter School, West Bromwich. Eight GCSEs.

Personal: Lives in Darlaston, West Midlands, with mother Hermine Francis, and brothers Tyrone and Elijah. Father Shaun, who first took him to Birchfield Harriers, runs guesthouse in Jamaica.

Career: 1997: Won junior boys' 100m at English schools championships. 1998: Ran in heats of 4 x 100m relay at world junior championships. 1999: Won world youth 100m title. 2000: Won 100m at world juniors. 2001: Won European Cup 100m and European junior 100m title. 2002: 60m silver medallist at European Indoors; AAA Championship 100m winner.