By Duncan Mackay

Jason_Smyth_Barcelona_July_2011May 21 - Jason Smyth improved his hopes of competing at both next year's Olympics and Paralympics in London when he broke his own Northern Ireland record for 100 metres today in Florida.


The 23 year-old Londonderry double Paralympic champion, who is visually impaired, clocked 10.22sec at the NTC Classic meeting in Orlando, a tenth of a second quicker than his previous best set at the Northern Ireland Championships in Antrim last June. 

Smyth's time is also a B standard for London 2012 and this year's World Championships in Daegu, where he will be hoping to compete for Ireland.

"Conditions were absolutely perfect," Smyth's coach Stephen Maguire told BBC Sport.

"He had a [maximum permissible] two metres per second wind and the temperature was 95 degrees."

The performance in a race won by Jamaica's Steve Mullings in 9.89 ahead of American Travis Padgett in 9.99 demonstrated that Smyth has fully recovered from the back injury which kept him out of last year's Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Athletics Championships in Christchurch in January, where he was unable to defend his T13 100 and 200m titles.

"It's the perfect start to the season for Jason after the injury problems which he had at the end of last season," said Maguire.

Like Smyth, Mullings and Padgett are members of Lance Brauman's training group, who are based in Florida.

Tyson Gay, the 2007 world 100m and 200m champion, is also a member of the group. 

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


Related stories
December 2010: Injury forces Smyth to withdraw from World Championships
November 2010: Smyth - Paralympian will break 10-second 100m barrier
November 2010: Smyth World Championship defence in doubt
November 2010: Sprint star Smyth fires warning shot ahead of World Championships
October 2010: Smyth heads Irish team for Christchurch