ANGELS, St Catherine — St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) sprinter Sachin Dennis ran the lead off leg of his school’s Class One 4x100m relay at Saturday’s 42nd staging of the Milo Western Relays at G C Foster Sports College in Angels, St Catherine, his first competitive outing in just under two years.

Despite the STETHS team running a decent 40.80 seconds to place second to Kingston College, the buzz created was for the 17-year-old mercurial sprinter who ran 10.20 seconds to win the Class Two 100m at Champs in 2018 but has never represented the country at any level.

In the year of the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, in July and the ISSA National Championships just over a month away, Reynaldo Walcott, who has conditioned Dennis with kids glove since he started at STETHS, is asking for patience even as he admits seeing a lot of positives.

Dennis is likely to compete at this week’s County of Cornwall Athletics Association’s (COCAA) Western Championships and Walcott told the Jamaica Observer on Saturday, “I think he will be ready for Champs,” but added the athlete could still be affected by “an illness” that prevented him from training earlier in the preseason.

After competing at Champs in 2018, Dennis was struck down by an injury, followed by an undisclosed illness.

“I don’t think he is 100 per cent over the illness, he is still a work in progress but we feel he is at a place or condition now where he can actually compete and compete well,” Walcott said. “He ran today so that is for everyone else to judge but we felt comfortable with how he was in practice to race him today.”

After two years out, Walcott said it was obvious that Dennis had made sufficient progress in training and in his health to return to the stress of competition. “So, whatever we are seeing now at practice it must mean that it was somewhat different from what we saw before in terms of how he is managing and feedback from doctors and physiotherapists.”

Asked what would satisfy him that his young charge would be ready to compete at the March Champs, Walcott said the approach to the five-day meet must be taken in context.

“To say he is going to be ready for Champs is a general statement; people use Champs for various purposes and for someone who has been out so long I am not sure that the expectations should be that he will be exactly as he was before, but it will be a stepping stone as you can only do what you can do at the time you are doing it, so closer to Champs whatever it is we feel he can do we will ask him to do that, nothing more, nothing less.”

Dennis’s participation at this week’s Western Champs would be “normal” Walcott said in that, “as we have done the last few years, take things on a day by day basis but things are looking positive and he is looking positive,” the coach emphasised.

For Walcott, Dennis’s participation could be one of “all or nothing” as when asked if the sprinter would be restricted to a certain number of events he said: “I don’t like to put any restrictions on him or any other athletes but what we do is figure what they can manage based on what you are seeing and based on the feedback they are giving you [and] if he looks like he can do the sprint double and the 4x100m relay.

“Or, if he [is] looking like just the relay or whatever, one individual race and a relay, that’s fine too, just to see him on the track is a plus and then we can work from that. He ran the relays today and that is a step in a positive direction and we hope he will graduate to individual events.”

Walcott pointed out that after careful and “continuous development” from primary to high school track and field, Dennis’s progress was retarded. “We can’t carry on as if it was business as usual, so we literally have to see how the creeping goes first then we move to the walk, and we will know how much you can run.”

The coach added that Dennis would have learnt tough lessons along the way. “He has learned from his experiences and he has matured a lot in every aspect of his life and it would have made him a stronger person.”