Sprinter's Bolt from the blue
AUSTRALIA'S fastest 12-year-old and our possible future Usain Bolt may be living right here on the Tweed.
Former Pacific Coast Christian School sprinter Tynan Neveceral has been burning up the track and leaving others in his wake as he continues to pile on personal bests in 100m and 200m sprints at national level.
At the Queensland Track and Field Championships in Brisbane in October, Neveceral decimated athletes up to two years older, setting three personal bests on his way to two gold medals.
The current National Athletics Australia under-14's champion, Neveceral, who attends Tweed Little Athletics and Gold Coast Central Athletics Club's, set a PB in his 100m heat before setting a blistering 11.46 seconds in the final to smash his previous mark of 11.94 seconds.
Now a member of Palm-Beach Currumbin High School's Sports Excellence program, Neveceral's father Mark said his son's plan was to keep reducing his personal bests, but to go as low as 11.46 seconds was a surprise for everyone.
He said while Athletics Australia doesn't keep records of times run for the under-12s age group, the time on paper would place Tynan among the world's elite juniors.
"We knew he would set some new PB's and the goal was to hit 11.5 seconds before the athletics season was over,” Neveceral said.
"But his sheer determination helped him smash that goal and set him as one of the fastest in the world in his age group.”
Bursting onto the scene in 2015 when he claimed two state titles at the Christian Independent Schools (CIS) New South Wales Championships in Sydney as an 11-year-old, Neveceral slashed his personal best time of 12.52 seconds to claim a national title in Perth in March in a time of 11.94 seconds.
He is also the 100m record holder at the Tweed Seagulls Little Athletics Club, Qld State Little Athletics and PBC High, and has set his sights on becoming a future Olympian.
While times are not recorded, Townsville schoolboy James Gallaugher ran an 11.72 in the 100m at 12 years of age, which made him the fastest 12-year-old in Australia.
Gallaugher has since gone on to run better times than a teenage Usain Bolt, but Neveceral's slashing of that time by .26 of a second propels Tweed's fastest ever 12-year-old well past him.
Neveceral will Tynan represent Queensland at the All Schools National Championships in Canberra from December 2, where he'll compete in the 100m and 200m sprints and 4x100m relays.