Gregory Little, coach of rising Jamaican sprint star Ackeem Blake, believes that his young athlete is destined to great things this season once he maintains his discipline and focus.

Blake, 21, surprised many people last year when he made it to the semi-finals of the men’s 100m event at the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in July.

However, before that he had caught the eye of the Jamaican public when he clocked a personal best 9.93 seconds to finish third at the National Championships in June, effectively serving notice of his consequent exploits.

He has so far clocked a season’s best time of 9.99 seconds, and according to Little, he is expecting Blake to run much faster than his personal best time this year.

“The aim is to try to get him to run faster than last year,” said Little. “The aim is to try and get him in the 9.8 region because last year he did 9.93, so we want to run faster that.”

Little added: “We are just taking it step by step because he has been putting in the hard work, and so we just want to go out there and compete and put a proper race together,” Little said.

Blake’s time of 9.93 seconds ranked him as the third fastest Jamaica in the world last year behind training partner Yohan Blake (9.85) and Oblique Seville 9.86.

Little pointed out that Blake has looked good in training this season, and thinks that once he remains healthy and stick to the race plan, the sky is the limit.

“He has been training very well because he has no complains or anything to worry about, so his preparation is on target,” he said. “We just want him to just stay focused and not get carried away because you know that when some athletes start to feel themselves, they get carried away, so we just want to keep on doing the right things and he will be okay.”

Blake is down to compete in the 100m on Sunday at the USATF Bermuda Grand Prix. Little stressed that Blake’s main focus is on executing a proper race.

“One of the focuses is that we want to see if he can capitalise on where he left off from in his last race. We are also focusing on his distribution base on his race plan that we have working on in training, because we are trying to iron out that last 20 metres of his race,” Little said.

“Ackeem is a confident person, and so whatever he does in training, we want to get it out there because he has been training well. Hopefully, we have some good conditions in Bermuda this year and not like last year, when we had a minus six headwind, so that he can produce a stellar performance,” the coach stated.