Legendary Jamaican coach Stephen Francis has warned against heaping expectations on gifted, young talent such as the Clayton twins – Tina and Tia, after reports surfaced that the Edwin Allen teenagers have decided to join the professional ranks at Francis’ MVP Track Club, based at the University of Technology.

Francis was coy when asked to confirm whether or not the twins would be joining his programme when the new training cycle begins in September, after the Jamaica Observer broke the development on Thursday, preferring instead to encourage fans to be patient with the pair.

“Well I heard the news but I don’t know if they got this from the people themselves but certainly they did not get that (information) from me. What I will say is that people should be very careful in piling expectations on kids, children, young ladies or young men who display extraordinary ability at relatively young ages,” Francis told the Jamaica Observer.

“The vast majority of those people who pass a certain level as teenagers never get any better. There’s a long history of this. I mean, somebody that runs 10.9 at age 17 or 18, people tend to think that their ceiling would automatically be 10.2 and so the expectation is what kills a lot of people and people should understand that there’s no linear or even arithmetic or progressive correlation between age and performance,” Francis added.

Tina Clayton, the World Under-20 champion in the 100m, is considered to be one of the most exciting young sprinters on the planet and lowered her personal best to 10.96 seconds while competing at the National Junior Championships.

The mark is the new national junior record in the event and the sixth-fastest in history by an Under-20 athlete.

Tia Clayton, who like her sister was a member of Jamaica’s world record-breaking 4x100m relay team, has a personal best of 11.25 seconds.