MTC

Personal Bests
60m: 6.55s
100m: 10.10s 

Harry Aikines-Ayreetey is one of the brightest young stars of British sprinting.  With a clutch of youth and junior gold medals already to his name, Harry is a precocious talent who will be looking to go into the Games in his home city in 2012 and come away with a medal.

Harry has been involved in athletics since the age of 10, when he joined Sutton & District AC, giving up football to concentrate on his future in sprinting.

He showed early promise and won the English Schools Track & Field 100m title in July 2004 in the Inter Boys age group and at the AAA Under 17 Championships in August 2004, he completed an impressive sprint double, winning both the 100m and 200m, against some tough opposition.

Medals in the Commonwealth Youth Games in Australia and the World Youth Championships (100m and 200m) followed in 2005 and his achievements were recognised when he was awarded the IAAF Rising Star Award and the Norwich Union Male Athlete of the Year as well as BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year. 2006 was an equally successful year and Harry firmly established himself as a force to be reckoned with by taking gold at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Beijing in 2006 and being part of the bronze medal-winning 4 x 100m relay squad.

The transition from junior to senior was not a seamless one and, after suffering stress fractures in his back, Harry spent the 2007 season in the treatment room rather than on the track.

However, he picked up from where he left off, with an encouraging indoor season at the start of 2008, lowering his 60m pb to 6.59s. This was followed by an imperious start to the outdoor season with victory at the Loughborough International at which he lowered his pb in the 100m to within the Olympic ‘A' qualifying time of 10.18s, before going on to bring it down yet again to 10.10s by the end of the year. 

2009 saw Harry become the European U23 Champion over 100m and also anchor the British 4x100m team to the Bronze medal at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin. Harry's progression continued during the 2010 season lowering his 60m PB to 6.55s which gained him selection to represent Great Britain at the World Indoor Championships in Doha. Showing good form, Harry qualified for the semi-final but sadly pulled up with a hamstring injury which brought a premature end to his season.

In true Harry fashion, he bounced back from this disappointment to finish second in the 2011 UK Indoor Championships. Harry went one better at the UK Championships in July, claiming the National title, equalling his PB and qualifying for the World Championships in Daegu in the process. Harry just missed out on qualifying for the final but claimed the notable scalp of Justin Gatlin in his semi-final.

An encouraging season, Harry recorded a new PB of 20.46 in the 200m which sees him go into 2012 as the number 1 ranked sprinter over both the 100m and 200m distances.

Harry was one of a select group of athletes who was featured in a fly on the wall documentary for the BBC called ‘Sprint', following the highs and lows of a sprinter's life in the run up to the 2012 Games when the public really got the chance to get to see his exuberant and infectious personality really shine through.

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