Mann sets national record, earns historic Champs sprint medal

Shrugging off his disappointment at not making the national team for the CARIFTA Games, Ricardo Mann ran a personal-best 10.44 seconds on Wednesday night, March 25, at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, earning a bronze medal, setting a new national record for the Under-20 boys’ 100m, and surpassing the World Under-10 Championships standard.

Following his victory at the Central Athletics Championships in February, Mann came into just his second meet of the year, representing Vere Technical High School under head coach Elton Coombs. The 16-year-old from Zabo, Aupicon, had clocked 11.32 seconds into a ridiculous 5.5 metres per second headwind to win the Class 2 (14-15) title. He will turn 17 in September.

On Tuesday evening, he ran 10.57 seconds in the preliminaries at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships, the second-fastest time in the opening round, with a 0.4m/s wind. His run of 10.49 in the semis was a new personal-best time, with a 3.1 m/s tailwind. And in the final, he lowered that time to 10.44, with a legal wind of 0.6 m/s.

Jamaica College’s Kai Kelly won the Class 2 final with an impressive run of 10.28 seconds, ahead of Calabar’s Joshua Ricketts (10.42s) and Mann (10.44s) of Vere Tech, who recorded the fastest reaction time of the three medallists. Mann outran Nick Joseph’s 2017 national junior record of 10.54, becoming the first Saint Lucian sprint medallist at Champs since Julien Alfred’s 200m bronze in 2018. He is Saint Lucia’s first male sprint medallist at Champs.

“I have a lot more left in the tank,” said Mann, following his medal-winning and record-setting run. “I didn’t get the opportunity to show what I was capable of last year, so I am grateful to run this in my second time running 100 this season. The main goal was, like, staying healthy, so I didn’t do anything too special.

“I was not expecting to go so fast, but from the time I ran the time in the heats, I felt ready. I said I just needed to sharpen up, work on my start, work on my finishing, and I think I can run a 10.2, 10.3.”

Per World Athletics, only eight Saint Lucian men have run 10.3 or faster under any conditions. Senior national record holder Jahvid Best ran 10.39 and 10.31 aged 17 and 18, but with impermissible tailwinds of 2.2 m/s and 2.4 m/s. 

Even with this achievement, which sets a new standard for Saint Lucian men’s sprinting, Mann will not attend the regional junior athletics festival at the Kirani James Stadium over Easter weekend, as he did not meet the qualifying time before the deadline. 

Last year, after running 10.74 to advance from the opening round of the 100m Under-17 boys, the former Beanefield Comprehensive Secondary School student was unable to finish his semifinal run due to the recurrence of a hamstring problem.

“I was looking forward to it, but so it goes,” he told St Lucia Times of CARIFTA 2026. “I can’t … change that now.” 

Mann has, however, made the mark for the World Athletics Under-20 Championships, August 5-9 in Oregon, USA. He joins Denzel Phillips in men’s discus throw and Naomi London in women’s 200m as the Saint Lucian athletes qualified so far.