(Photos and video courtesy of Ato Boldon)
Khalifa St. Fort left her high school team after the Texas Relays and trained with Trinidad & Tobago Olympian Ato Boldon full time at the Ansin Sports Complex in Miramar. That decision has paid huge dividends for the seventeen year old star. St. Fort saw her times drop dramatically and her stock rise as she won the Golden South Classic and was third at the Adidas Dream 100 before starting international competition.
She won gold at the Trinidad & Tobago Junior National Championship and followed that performance up with a silver medal at the IAAF World Youth Championships in Colombia running one of the fastest time in the country 11.19s! The road was just being paved as she headed out to the Nike Elite Sprint Camp in Oregon to learn from the professionals like Allyson Felix. The rising senior added more gold to her collection finishing first at the Pan Am Junior Games in Toronto. This weekend the youngest member of Team T&T was originally scheduled to compete in the 100 and in the 4x100m relay, but Boldon who is also one of the coaches for the team, says she will just partake in the relay.
"Because Semoy Hackett ran a faster time at Pan Ams and is using the 100 to get ready for the 200 Khalifa will run the relay only. It's too bad because her practice times were very close to Kelly Ann Baptiste which confirmed that she was ready to PR here again, but she has her whole career ahead of her and three people will never beat her at Trinidad Nationals so she'll be fine."
(Khalifa St. Fort practices relay drills with her T&T teammates)
St. Fort hasn't run in a relay since Texas Relays nearly five months ago in March. Boldon says she will anchor the team, but only in the rounds.
"She's never really been trained to pass or receive the baton at this level. It took a lot of coaching up in the past week. By putting her at anchor she has the least to do while still getting her feet wet. In the finals we will go with the veterans. The only way she runs the final is if something happens to one of the other three thru their 100 or 200 rounds."