He is the fastest 15-year-old in history but Divine ‘Lightning’ Iheme had not even shown his face to the world when his mum knew that something exceptional was afoot.
“Even when he was in my tummy, he was fast,” says Nkiruka Iheme, laughing. “I was, ‘Calm down’. The kicking! Oh my god! When he was young, you couldn’t open the door because he would run out. We were always, ‘Close the door, close the gate’. Divine didn’t crawl. He just stood and then he walked…” And now he sprints at a speed that is without equal for someone so young.
Divine had already been making waves inside athletics but reached a wider prominence last August when, aged only 14 and just a few weeks after completing Year 9 at school, he ran 100 metres in a staggering 10.30sec. For comparison, Usain Bolt’s best time as a 14-year-old was 10.57sec.
Divine’s time of 10.30sec would have placed him third in the British men’s 100m championship last summer and been quick enough to reach an Olympic final as recently as 1996. It was also almost a second faster than Noah Lyles at the same age and demolished the previous world age-group record of 10.51sec by Jamaica’s Sachin Dennis.
Divine was then at it again last month, breaking the indoor 60m world best for a 15-year-old in 6.71sec to surpass a record set by the American sprinter J-Mee Samuels back in 2002. He will be in action over the same distance at the British Indoor Under-17 Championship on Saturday when the English Institute for Sport in Sheffield will come to a virtual standstill for his race.
While preparing this week at his local Horspath track in Oxford, there were certainly glimpses of a unique talent, notably when he occasionally accelerated after practising his start and suddenly took off like a Formula One car shifting into turbo. An ability to stay low for so long was instantly striking.
Equally impressive was the overriding sense of a humble young athlete who is enjoying their sport while thriving in a community-orientating training group that is underpinned by faith (they pray together before training) and a meticulous focus on technique. Mum Nkiruka, herself an international sprinter for Nigeria before moving to England after the 2002 Commonwealth Games, is also the hands-on coach of the PWD Athletics Academy. To the frequent sound of a whistle, she is constantly correcting, advising and encouraging her young athletes. Nkiruka previously spent almost a decade in the British Army where she also acquired what she calls “her military voice”.
“She’s tough - really tough - very specific,” says Divine, prompting another smile from his mum. “He loves running so, so much,” says Nkiruka. “He doesn’t want to miss his training so, if he doesn’t do his homework, it’s ‘no training’. The language we use is, ‘no pain, no gain’ or ‘pain now, play later’. Some children are just in the house playing games.”
Divine’s dad, Innocent, was also an international-level sprinter. The Ihemes have two older sons - 19-year-old Praise and 17-year-old Wisdom who love football as well as athletics - and they first began informally training Divine when he was seven. Family videos of hill repetitions and hurdle jumps already confirm both an impressive arm drive and eyes filled with steely determination.
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School sports days would soon become a procession - “I’d always win the 75m dash and the 200m by a big margin,” says Divine, even if memories of the QuadKids programme at Radley Athletics Club are rather more mixed.
As well as his favoured sprint and long jump, this would also include throwing a vortex (a sort of foam javelin for children) and a mini test of endurance over 600m. “I hated the 600m - I remember crying,” says Divine, who began focussing on sprinting in 2022 when he was 12. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do my own events and I want to take this seriously from now on’. Mum didn’t want to push me until I said I wanted to do it. All she says is, ‘Focus on the one main goal’. It was two years ago that I ran my first sub 11 seconds - 10.86 when I was 13 - that was my first big thing. I have just been gradually working and working.”
After winning multiple age-group national titles, his feats reached an international audience in August with that spectacular run at Lee Valley in 10.30sec.
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“I remember on the day the timer was delayed,” he says. “I was crouched, waiting. I saw 10.3 and I started screaming and shouting and running around. I was really surprised. The commentator started going crazy. It was an amazing experience. I loved it.” His mum was visiting family at the time in Nigeria but they were able to watch footage of the race. “We were jumping up and down - there was a window - and, in the excitement, I banged my head,” laughs Nkiruka. She believes that Divine could go “a lot” faster this year but is understandably cautious at the suggestion that he is not so far off 10 seconds already. It is another 15 months, after all, before he will even be sitting his GCSEs.
“Let’s watch and see,” she says. “We cannot say now. He’s not in competition with anybody - he is just enjoying his training. If something comes, ‘Wow’. If not, ‘OK’. At the moment I don’t want to put pressure on him. He is going to do well.”
Divine himself says that the additional attention since his world records has been “a bit difficult” because he was not used to the recognition, but that he is enjoying the experience of meeting new people. So what did his schoolfriends make of it?
“They always say, ‘I can’t believe I’m friends with the world record holder’,” he says. “It’s really good. They are really happy for me.” And what about the people he races against and invariably beats? “They are all very happy for me - they are also using me as a target.”
An emphasis on long-term development is obvious from watching the group train. After Divine has helped get the equipment ready, they begin a session that is all about flexibility, technique and explosive reaction out of the blocks. They train only three times a week and, as Divine’s still slight physique confirms, he has not been exposed to any significant weight training.
“This winter we haven’t done anything in the gym,” says Nkiruka. “We use the body as a weight - bounding, jumps, sometimes press-ups. Everybody can run but technique is paramount if you want to have a career.” The PWD in Nkiruka’s academy stands for ‘Power, Will and Drive’ and she says that the emphasis is on creating a family feel that fuels both belonging and confidence. “I know what is inside them, and I encourage them to let it go,” she says.
Ruby Rogers is one of Divine’s training partners and herself ranked among the leading young female sprinters in the country. She highlights her friend’s “humility, focus and faith”, and says that his success is inspiring the whole group. Divine has also been invited to compete next Saturday in the ‘Keely Klassic’, a one day celebration of athletics in Birmingham that will include Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson’s quest for the world indoor 800m record.
Between training, he attends church every Friday and Sunday. His favourite subjects at school are business studies and PE, where he particularly enjoys volleyball and badminton, as well as learning about sports psychology. He singles out Lyles, Dina Asher-Smith, Shericka Jackson and Letsile Tebogo as his favourite sprinters, although the first race he remembers being shown was Bolt’s 19.19sec 200m world record. That was set in 2009; the same year he was born. “I’ve met Dina [Asher-Smith] - she said that she will be waiting to see me in Team GB in the future,” he says. And what is the ambition? “I’d just love to compete in the Olympics for Great Britain, run the 100m flat, the 200m flat, and the relays.”
