ANTONIO Watson is headed to the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, next month as the joint 10th-fastest Jamaican ever in the 400m, after placing second to Sean Bailey in Sunday’s final at the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) National Championships at the National Stadium.

Watson ran a personal best 44.54 seconds, beating the 44.75 seconds he ran at the Racers Grand Prix a month earlier, a result that changed the direction of his season and the event for which he was preparing.

The former Petersfield High and World Youth Championships 400m champion in 2017 — and who has run a variety of events from the 100m, 200m and 400m hurdles — appeared set to run the 200m.

After Sunday’s run, however, he told the Jamaica Observer that: “I’m feeling good, knowing that at the start of the season I wasn’t preparing for the 400m, we made the switch midway the season, and coming out here to run a 44.5 — a time that I had only dreamt of and now I am actually running it — I feel great about it.”

Watson, who has personal best of 10.21 seconds in the 100m, 20.49 seconds in the 200m, and 55.27 seconds in the 400m hurdles, said despite his successes so far he is not looking too far ahead and will take each race as it comes.

“I don’t put expectations on myself because that’s [an] extra burden so I just keep training hard, and keep focused, and hope to run faster,” he said on Sunday.

Watson reasoned that he is not new to success at the global level, having won the gold in Nairobi in 2017 as well as winning at the national level at the ISSA Championships and at the Carifta Championships.

“I don’t think that I have to prove anything. I have already gone to a Youth Olympic Games and I won at Youth Championships, and so my name is actually out there. It’s just time and place for everything so it’s now my time to go back home and get better.”