IF, as expected, double world record-holder Usain Bolt switches to the 400m in the next few years, he would set up some exciting clashes against new world champion Kirani James, the man once dubbed the ‘next Usain Bolt’.

After terrorising regional competition, smashing records in the 200m and 400m, the Grenadian James, who won his country’s first ever medal at the IAAF World Championships this week when he became the youngest man, two days shy of his 19th birthday, to win the 400m in Daegu, was tabbed by many as the next Usain Bolt.

After joining a select group of nine elite athletes who have won at every IAAF level from Youths through to Seniors and arguably in the shortest time span — just three years — James is not a carbon copy of anyone and is the first Kirani James.

In Brixen-Bressanone, Italy in 2009, James took his prodigious talent to the global scene when he became the first man to win the 200m/400m double at one IAAF championships when he took the World Youths titles.

Last year as a University of Alabama freshman in Moncton, Canada, he easily won the World Juniors 400m title while grumbling in post race interviews that fast times and records meant more to him than titles.

This week in Daegu, he caught the world leader, American LaShawn Merritt, on the line in a new personal best 44.60 seconds to complete the trifecta and told reporters afterwards, “Usain is special in his own way, but I just want to be Kirani James from Grenada.”

Until recently it was thought Bolt would be the man to erase Michael Johnson’s 400m world record of 43.18 seconds set in 1999 in Seville, Spain, despite his personal best being just 45.28 seconds, after running 45.35 as a 16-year-old.

Johnson himself appeared to have anointed Bolt his natural successor and at the 2008 IAAF gala in Monaco, asked Bolt, “How long will you let me keep my 400m record?” after Bolt had broken his 200m mark at the Beijing Olympics earlier that same year.

James’ rise in the ranks, tied with three others — including Jamaica’s Michael Blackwood — at 44.60 seconds at age 18, the second best ever by a junior, sends a clear warning his star is on the rise.

If say in three or four years when Bolt becomes bored with the 100m and switches to the longer 400m race, he will not be short of top quality competition and by then, James could be the world record-holder.

Bolt has not run the quarter-mile competitively in years, using it only as background training, but competed in the event at the World Youth Championships in Canada in 2003 and won the Class 1 title at the ISSA Boys Champs.

Bolt also has a relay silver medal in the 4x400m from the World Junior Championships in 2002 when he ran the second leg on the team that set the current national junior record of 3 minutes 04.06 seconds.