Having achieved a personal best time in the 100 metres recently, Jamaican sprinter Shashalee Forbes is now more motivated and confident of securing an individual spot on Jamaica’s team to this year’s World Championships, which will be held in Budapest, Hungary.

Forbes, 27, has been in excellent form this season, which saw her achieving a massive personal best 10.98 seconds in the 100m at the Bermuda Grand Prix on May 21.

In fact, this was the first time that the diminutive sprinter was breaking the 10-second barrier.

Forbes was a member of Jamaica’s 4x100m relay team that won a bronze medal at the 2017 World Championships in London, England. She was a reserve runner on the country’s 4x100m relay team that captured the silver medal at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016 in Brazil.

However, despite her exploits, Forbes has yet to secure a spot on Jamaica’s team as an individual runner. But she believes that this year could be the year that she will achieve that feat.

“My main focus is to get an individual spot, so I am working hard towards that this year,” Forbes told the Jamaica Observer.

“There are chances there and so for me, I am working to be a part of the team to Budapest, and so I want to make sure that I am in the top six whether it is an individual spot or the relay,” she said.

Forbes is currently conditioned by veteran coach Maurice Wilson at the Sprintech Track Club which is based at GC Foster College in St Catherine.

She underscored that her season has been going well and claims she was not surprised with her first sub-11 clocking.

“So far my season has been great; it is going the way that I expected because everything that I have been working on is coming together, and so I just have trust in all that I have been doing,” Forbes said.

“For me it [10.98] is unexplainable because I can’t explain how I felt when it happened, but I just know that I am happy about it and my aim is to go much lower this season,” she stated. “But I won’t say how much faster I am targeting until it happens, so just look out,” Forbes said.

Her time of 10.98 has placed her as the third-fastest Jamaican this year behind Shericka Jackson’s 10.78 and Alana Reid’s 10.92. Forbes, who is known as an excellent 200m runner, pointed out that she is more motivated this year to achieve great things on the form that she is now in. She currently has a personal best of 22.71 in the 200m event.

“I am very motivated to do great things this year because that personal best in the 100m just shows me that I have the potential to do better and to even go faster,” she said.

“My first target is to try and not to get injured because as long as I am injury-free, then I think that anything is possible.

“I am known to be a good curve runner because I am good at the 200 metres and there is a saying that said if you work hard in the 100 metres, you might a get a good 200 metres, and so I am just doing what I have been told to do and then just see what happens,” Forbes said.

The National Championships, which will be used to select Jamaica’s team to this year’s World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, will be held July 6-9 at the National Stadium.