MONTEGO BAY, St James — Calabar High schoolboy Javon Francis has signalled that he could make a bid for a place in the Jamaican team to the IAAF World Championships later this year after running a new personal best 45.42 seconds in the 400m at Saturday’s Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association’s (JAAA) all-comers meet at the National Stadium.

That time is the best in the world so far by a junior, beating the 45.57 seconds ran by American Arman Hall, who also ran the previous second best time of 45.58 seconds, both set this month.

Hall’s 45.42 seconds is also the second best time run by a Jamaican man, senior or junior this year, just one hundredth of a second behind reigning national senior champion and Olympic Games semi-finalist Dane Hyatt who ran 45.41 seconds to retain his title at the NCAA Division Two National Championships in Pueblo, Colorado, on Saturday. His time is ahead of Omar Johnson’s 45.55 seconds set a week ago, while Javere Bell, who ran a personal best 45.57 seconds at the Jamaica International Invitational earlier this month.

Francis, who has turned in some stunning relay leg runs this year, at both the CARIFTA Games and at the Penn Relays, leading Jamaica and Calabar, respectively, to victories, has dropped his personal best by almost a full second from 46.31 seconds last year and should be a dark horse for a spot on the team to Moscow in August.

On Saturday, the 18-year-old Francis beat Olympic representative Rusheen McDonald (46.19 seconds) and Kegan Campbell (46.23) with Bell fourth in 47.12 seconds.

He also ran the 200m in 21.07 seconds on Saturday and his coach Michael Clarke thinks he is on course to run faster come the JAAA/Supreme Ventures National Senior Trials and make the team.

“Running fast at Senior Trials and in August has always been the primary objective, from we started training in September,” Clarke told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

While adding he was “not sure he will run at Junior Trials”, Clarke said barring any illness, he “should be running faster in a month from now”.

Francis shot to national attention last year when he broke his personal best twice on his way to the final of the 400m at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain.

He ran 46.31 seconds to win his first round heat, then lowered it to 46.06 seconds in the semi-finals where he finished second but had run out of gas and could only manage 47.57 seconds for last place in the final.

This year he ran 46.21 seconds to win the Class One gold medal at the ISSA/GraceKennedy ‘Champs’ before clocking 46.00 seconds to take the silver medal in the Under-20 boys 400m at the CARIFTA Games held in The Bahamas.

It was in the relays that he stood out, however, coming from third place in The Bahamas to lead Jamaica to the gold, passing Trinidad’s gold medallists Machel Cedeno and The Bahamas’ bronze medallist Stephen Newbold to lead Jamaica to a new meet record 3:05.68.

He produced yet another stunning run at the Penn Relays a month later, again taking the baton in third place but ran 44.8 seconds, the fastest ever split for a high school boy at the 119-year-old meet, to power home his school in 3:09.22, the second best ever, passing Manchester High’s Oshane Burrell, who ran a 46.4 seconds split and caught Munro College’s Delano Williams on the line to deny the St Elizabeth school their third straight title.