PARIS, France — MVP Track Club Head Coach Stephen Francis says sprinter Kishane Thompson has more top performances to come.

Francis says Thompson will run much faster than he did in his previous races this season as he aims to break Jamaica’s eight-year drought for a global sprint men’s title at the Olympic Games.

Thompson, 23, has had an outstanding season and is the fastest man in the world this year in the men’s 100m, with a personal best (PB) time of 9.77 seconds, achieved in the final of the 100m at the National Championships last month.

Thompson has been improving rapidly, recording times of 9.82 seconds in the heats of the National Championships before clocking 9.84 seconds in the semi-finals of the event. Francis says while he will not predict the times Thompson will run at the Olympic Games, he strongly believes that he will surpass his PB.

“Everybody knows how he has done his times, and I can’t predict what he is going to do, just to say that I don’t think anybody has seen him run at his maximum,” Francis said. “So we will see if that is going to happen for this Olympics and how fast that will be. It appears to be that he is at least as good as he was in June at the Championships, so we will see.”

Despite Thompson being a favourite for the 100m gold medal, Francis says the sprinter is not getting carried away and is focusing on doing his best for the country at the Olympic Games.

“I don’t see the pressure because, at the end of the day, everybody is talking about experience, but it is all about speed,” he said. “When the gun fires, you run from here down to there, and whoever gets there first wins. It has nothing to do with experience or mental pressure or whatever; he just has to be able to execute as well as he can.”

Francis says he is not too concerned about Thompson’s ability to navigate through the rounds of competition, noting that he recently put together one of the greatest series of 100m over three rounds ever seen at the National Championships last month.

“I don’t understand; he ran 9.82, 9.84, and 9.77. Not even Usain Bolt has ever had that kind of series in a championship, so I don’t see what anybody is worrying about,” he said. “He averaged 9.81 over three rounds. Maybe Usain did the same thing in 2009 when he ran 9.58, but I don’t think anybody else has done that.

“I haven’t checked everybody, but I have checked a lot. So I don’t see what everybody is worrying about.”

Bolt, who is regarded as the greatest sprinter of all time, is the last Jamaican male to win a global sprint title when he won the sprint double at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Thompson, along with Oblique Seville, who finished second at the National Championships, and Ackeem Blake, who was third, will be Jamaica’s representatives in the men’s 100m event, which is scheduled to begin on Saturday.